Ghost in the Shell
by Madam Chaos Shadow
Summary: Something is causing Danny's control over them to fluctuate, and in the midst of him losing his grip it seems Vlad has decided to make matters worse... Pet project intermittent update.
1. Prologue

Ghost in the Shell  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Madam Chaos Shadow  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Willingly rated 'T' for:  
.Mild language  
.Mild to moderate violence  
.Potential ectoplasm and gore  
.Very bad jokes like the one above  
-- - - - - - - - - - - -  
Disclaimer :  
The show _Danny Phantom_, the character of _Danny Phantom_, and all things related to _Danny Phantom_ are not property of me. They all belong to Butch Hartman, as they are his brainchild, and _Danny Phantom_ and _The Fairly Oddparents_ make me very happy. I want fairy godparents to give me ghost powers!  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Obligatory Long-Winded Author Notes – Skipping is a good idea :

A year ago – around the time the episodes 'Attack of the Killer Garage Sale' and 'Splitting Images' were aired (I believe the last episode I had seen was actually 'One of a Kind', but I may have missed any episode; at any rate, I had only seen three different episodes and it was early in the first season run) – I had a dream. I admit that I have a lot of weird as hell dreams, and oftentimes they manifest as whatever I've been thinking about for a long while (I had a dream about Psychonauts every day for two weeks after I began playing the game, and had a recurring disorder throughout this week, which was somewhat frightening). This one, though, involved Danny Phantom.

This dream sticks out in my mind for two reasons: One, it involved a concept of the Ghost Zone that I had at the time (which is actually fairly similar to the one shown in the show, except my variation was dark purple and blue and black rather than being so very... green... And the islands weren't so decrepit, and some of them linked together), and two, the story seemed to involve Danny (whose eyes I was looking out of most of the time) trapped in his ghost form and, later on, trapping his family, friends, and Mr. Lancer (why? I don't know) in the Ghost Realm before finally coming before his mother and father and admitting that all the 'false' ghost readings they had been getting throughout the year were from him – that he (the apparently unrecognizable ghost form) was actually Danny, and he was, indeed, a ghost-human hybrid.

I had wanted to write the story from the time I had that dream, but I never quite got around to it (mainly because, beyond that, I had no idea what the storyline concept was going to be). Instead, I watched a few more episodes, ecstatic when they finally showed the Ghost Zone in 'Prisoners of Love' (admittedly, though, I was a bit disappointed - my dream version was so much less... Green...). As I watched, I began to formulate a theory, based at first on a short sequence during 'What You Want' and, most recently, for a fair storyline junction during 'The Ultimate Enemy'.

It occurred to me that a ghost's ectoplasmic structure, being of a non-corporeal substance, could never fuse with the molecular structure of a human - and if it did, the results would not allow a switch from ghost to human, but would instead properly hybridize the two, creating an astral projection that could be seen and heard and _possibly_ touched, but that existed in neither the Ghost Zone nor the human plane. The explanation the show gives, then, is certainly not my liking.

Having seen when Danny flies through the Fenton Ghost Catcher during 'What You Want', when his human half and ghost half separate, and during 'The Ultimate Enemy', when both Danny and Vlad's ghosts are removed via the use of the Ghost Gauntlets, I have formed a theory which, I believe, is slightly more sensible.

Technically, I formed two, but the one I recently thought about is a bit morbid and doesn't make any sense in the context of the show. To put it simply, I began wondering wether Danny was actually... Y'know... Dead. Of course, if he were, he wouldn't have his human form, would he? Which then begs the question of what would happen were Danny to die... Hmm.

Anyway, enough of that. He's my somewhat more 'likely' theory, the 'Ghost in the Shell' theory. Enjoy my hybridized insanity/stupidity.

Madam Chaos

P.S.: This comes right after 'The Ultimate Enemy', and please bear in mind that I have missed a smattering of episodes, so if something important took place during any of them, it's not my fault I don't know about it. This also means all shows after 'The Ultimate Enemy' have no obligatory bearing on this fic, therefore I will not be held accountable if something totally different than what I say happens later on. So nyah. I will be choosy about what later material worms its way into the fic, since it most likely will anyway. Particularly information in 'Identity Crisis' which, at this writing, has not yet aired, but I have a feeling that it will help bring a tiny bit of support to my theory no matter what anybody in the show says (because the show is silly!)

P.P.S.: "Great. Now I'm going through evil puberty."

I'm sorry. But that was a really good line.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

P R O L O G U E

Danny looked up and blinked.

The Box Ghost was hovering above him, a single, empty cardboard box swirling around the ethereal dimwit. Wondering vaguely where the box had come from, Danny spotted something about laboratory supplies on the side of the box as it zoomed closer to his line of vision. The ecto-filtration tube – they only came special order – had likely been packed in a cardboard box.

He had changed the ecto-filtration tube a fair amount of time ago; why was the box still in his parent's laboratory?

_Doesn't matter_.

"What are you doing here?" he asked calmly. The Box Ghost looked down at him, his eyes narrowing, his lips curled into a smile.

"Ah, you have come to do righteous combat with the Box Ghost!" he howled. "Prepare to taste my corrugated cardboard doom!"

The box suddenly hurled through the air, straight toward Danny, but the bow blinked and leaned against the stairwell wall, phasing into non-corporeal existence and allowing the box to bounce against the stairs behind him, then ricochet off, skittering harmlessly away. He resumed his normal consistency once there was no chance of being smacked over the head with a cardboard box and stood tall again, not entirely sure how to go about his job this time.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "There aren't too many boxes down here..."

"I am aware of this!" the Box Ghost returned immediately. "Instead, I have come to... Ah... I have come to..."

He faltered, unable to quite figure out what he had come to do, and Danny sighed, two rings of electricity originating from his waist marking his immediate transformation into his ghost mode.

"I'm really not in the mood," he admitted, reaching over his back and into the small pack still hanging from his shoulders, "but this shouldn't take long."

The Fenton Thermos in his hands, he suddenly launched himself off of the stairwell, toward the Box Ghost, and tackled him bodily, slamming the both of them into one of the walls, the Box Ghost taking the brunt of the blow. Danny released him and prepared to end the battle immediately by absorbing him into the thermos, but suddenly felt an impact up the side of his head – hardly painful, but fairly jarring. He shook it off, realizing with a terribly embarrassed rush that he had just been knocked by the deadly force of a cardboard box, and spun, looking to see where the Box Ghost had slipped off to.

"I really don't have time for this," he moaned. He sent a look up as he heard the faint sound of wind rushing around a square object, and looked up, powering a short blast and firing a beam of ectoplasm at the box coming after him, disintegrating it in a blow.

The Box Ghost hovered on the opposite side of the room, a sheepish look on his pudgy face, and smiled, shrugged, muttered a low "Beware?" under his breath.

The thermos cap was already off.

"Please," he said. "I have an essay to write! I don't have time for you!"

Channeling his power through the thermos, the ghost sent a wave of spectral energy from the thermos, catching the Box Ghost in its grip and dragging him immediately into the confines of the bottle. Once the Box Ghost was fully absorbed, his cry of "Do not underestimate the power of old-time wooden crates!" still echoing, Danny capped off the thermos, sighing, and then stopped.

"Old-time wooden crates?"

Crack!

He hit the ground hard, the thermos tumbling out of his grip, and rolled head over heels before coming to a complete stop with a painful slam against the opposite wall. He stared up to the ceiling, squinting a bit, and saw one such old-time crate fall from where it had been hovering above him, splintering upon contact with the ground.

That had been rather embarrassing, too. Where did _that_ come from?

He rolled to his stomach and got up on his knees, pushing himself off the floor and looking over to the thermos. It was still secure, thankfully, the Box Ghost had been properly captured this time. He stepped toward it and picked up the bottle, then turned and made his way to the Portal, preparing to siphon off the ghosts into the Ghost Zone.

"Danny?"

His sister's voice came lilting down the stairwell, and he stopped, turning toward the stairs and waiting for her to appear. She did, after a moment, her eyes focusing briefly on Danny, who had yet to change back from his ghost incarnation, before suddenly shifting to the broken remnants of the crate. She arched an eyebrow.

"What just...?"

"The Box Ghost," he said wearily, going toward the portal again and setting up the thermos to siphon off its contents. "He... Wields boxes." To this explanation, he shrugged, figuring that was fairly obvious, and in an electric flash Danny Fenton was standing where Danny Phantom had been.

"But where did the crate-"

"That," Danny said quietly, "I don't think anybody can answer."

The thermos cleaned, he removed it from the socket built to sustain it, and turned to Jazz, a smile on his face. "There we go," he said cheerily. "He shouldn't be around for a little while."

"Good to hear," she said, although she sounded somewhat distracted; clearly, she had been looking for him for some other reason than to ask where the crate had originated from. "I heard you say something about an English paper a bit earlier?"

"Ehm... Yeah, I guess I was saying something about that..."

"You were raving about it upstairs... Two pages on what now?"

"'What advice would you give some someone beginning their high school career'," he recited with a sigh. "Or I could do 'What is the worst piece of advice you have received, why, and did you follow it anyway?'" He paused for a moment, murmuring something about Sam and the Portal, then quickly recovered and went on: "Or I could go with 'If you could spend a year with a real or fictional person in the past, present, or future, whom would you choose and why?'" He looked down to the thermos, frowning slightly. "I can safely say the Box Ghost isn't on that list..."

"Do you want some help?"

He looked up to her, and this time smiled. "You know, I think I'd appreciate that a lot."

..:00:..

His name was Daniel Fenton. He had what one could call a 'typical lower high-school geek build'; not exactly tall yet, with a scrawny build brought on from growth spurts that had yet to help him surpass the height of about five foot four, caught in the awkward years between being a child and being an adult. His eyes, a bright medium blue, still gave him an air of innocence and youth, while his hair, black as raven's feathers and apparently only half-combed, gave him the suggestion of scruffy rebellion that one just entering the teenage years almost invariably felt inclined to adopt.

He was fourteen years old at the time when his good friend Samantha Manson happened to hint that he should put on a jumpsuit, walk into a dangerous and unstable contraption, and lean on the 'on' switch that was, curiously, located inside of the invention that would be ultimately named the Fenton Portal; in theory, the Portal was meant to open a gateway into the Ghost Zone, an alternate dimension populated by the spirits of those who have passed on, but in practice, it made some lights glow along its outer ring. Of course, Danny would have the bad luck to lean on the strangely placed on switch while some of the panels were open for repairs, for when he did so the machine activated, and the exposed wires came to life, sending a shock through the young man that, under normal conditions, should have effectively killed him.

And, in a manner of speaking, it did.

Danny awoke from the blast to a painful all-encompassing cold and realized after a moment that he was definitely not breathing. Leaping to his feet and checking for a pulse that wasn't there confirmed that he had either gone between lives or was going to be sent to the loony bin after he would inevitably panic and report to his parents that he had just died.

He began to calm down when he realized that dead men tell no tales, and he was perfectly capable of doing just that. About the time he had come to the conclusion he was just having a very surreal experience, Sam found her way through the thick smoke hanging over the floor of the laboratory and shrieked, which was a peculiar thing for the gothic girl to do. When Danny attempted to figure out what she had cried out about, she seemed shocked to recognize his voice, and with a murmur she informed that he was definitely not himself, and that he inexplicably had a fine, white-blue aura around him. She reached out to verify what she was seeing, and about the time her hand passed straight through his arm and left her with a terrible chill running through her fingers, it occurred to Danny that something was very much wrong.

A look in the mirror placed within the lab confirmed this assumption; his hair had changed from its deep raven to a curious snowy white, and his eyes had lost their medium blue in favour of a medium emerald that, much to his shock, were glowing. The jumpsuit he had been wearing – silver and accented with black on the belt, boots, and gloves – had inverted in its colours and, now that he was looking at it, seemed to have grafted itself to him; the zipper had inexplicably disappeared.

After the maniac scream had escaped his throat and the incoherent babbling had stopped, Danny took a moment of silence with Sam to try and figure out what had happened. The conclusion was very simple: the electrical shock had clearly done something really weird, and now strange things were happening. This gave potential credence to his stark change in hair colour and the fact that he was glowing, but his eye change and the inversion of the jumpsuit were inexplicable, and much harder to determine were first of all, why Danny felt so cold, and second of all, how Sam's hand had phased through his arm.

Of course, Danny's parents were ghost hunters – that was, after all, why they had built the portal – so it came to him after a moment that he had successfully electrocuted himself to death and was now standing before Sam living (or whatever) proof that his parents weren't quite so crazy had he had thought. Pity his life had to be given to prove it.

Sam promptly moved to smack him out of these negative thoughts and this time actually hit flesh. Her hand reached his head much harder than she had intended, forced him to stagger to the side and fall to the floor. A flash of white erupted around the young man, and two circlets of electrical energy suddenly engulfed him, moving from about his waist and simultaneously up to the top of his head and down the soles of his shoes. Once the lightning spark had ended, Danny was lying on the floor, no longer looking quite so pale, no longer wearing the jumpsuit, and no longer supernatural.

He rose to his feet immediately and seemed quite happy that the tandem hallucination was over. His mind drifted momentarily to what he had seen in the mirror, the curious representation of himself that, he hoped, was not actually him, and the word fluttered across his mind.

_Ghost?_

He felt a blast of cold overtake him at that moment as the electrical flash appeared again, once more starting from the waist and traveling across his body. He closed his eyes in the wake of the brilliant flash, and Sam covered her face as well, but upon opening his eyes it was obvious that something was very much wrong – Sam looked taken aback, and looking down, he found that he had spontaneously reverted to the alternate form again, and with another cry of surprise mingled with despair he staggered back.

About the time he unwittingly phased through the table, overestimated his step, fell, hit the floor, and began to rise again against his volition and without even bothering to get to his feet, the thought occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, the shock had killed him and left in a curious halfway state wherein his human body could shift into his spectral form at relative will. This thought only occurred to him when Sam, who seemed to have a grasp of the situation far better than Danny did (perhaps because she was spared the panic of having walked intangibly through a table and found herself floating about three feet off the ground afterward), had told him what she thought was going on.

She stayed with him that night, fabricating an excuse that her parents would accept, and after perhaps twenty minutes more of trying to rationalize the situation Tucker decided to make his appearance. And when Tucker – techno-geek extraordinaire, and self-delusional ladies man even more so – realized that the house was empty save for the sounds coming from the basement, he decided to investigate and walked into the middle of a rather peculiar scene; it looked to him that Danny had, in the last few seconds, launched himself off of a table in hopes that Sam would catch him in the fall, but both had failed in their attempts and now lay sprawled in the opposite wall, entangled momentarily and incredibly embarrassed when they looked up to see that Tucker's blue eyes were very firmly fixed on them and he seemed about ready to say the inevitable: "Okay, seriously, what the hell?", another electric flash encompassed the raven-haired boy and, once the transition was over and Sam shoved him off of her, shivering slightly, the exclamation really did come:

"Okay, seriously, what the _hell_?"

It took a moment to explain, and Tucker only half-listened to what Sam was saying – he was too fixated on Danny, who had once again lost control of the curious form he kept flickering back and forth from and was now lying on his back, floating idly through the air, clearly growing tired of the routine, which had somehow become trite to him. By the time he had phased entirely through a wall, Tucker's jaw had dropped and he had entirely tuned out Sam's explanation of the situation – Danny's live performance was giving him enough of an idea of what had happened.

A moment later, when Danny calmly walked through the wall and resumed his corporeal form, Tucker had already run for the phone and decided that if Sam was staying to watch the show, he was staying as well. The event didn't come too often than one of your best friends seemed to spontaneously gain the ability to transform into a ghost.

In fact, it was less than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Such conditions to turn somebody into a half-ghost (that was the decided term for this weird situation, although they knew that it wasn't entirely proper) didn't seem likely to arise too often. Or ever before. Or ever again.

Which meant that the immediate aftermath of the situation – once Danny had figured out how to keep his normal, human form and prevent the ghostly half from surfacing every ten seconds – was announced with a symphony caught between the discordant notes of Tucker announcing how cool this all was, Sam trying to get him to stop announcing how cool it was even though it was fairly clear she held similar convictions, and Danny – sitting on a chair and slumped forward, resting his head in his hands – feverishly thought about what repercussions this could bring and how his parents would react. The back of the young man's mind, however, was dominated by thoughts more akin to what his friends were expressing, and secretly the little voice was waving its arms in the air and screaming about how cool life would be now.

To this, he looked up and smiled, and in that act let his guard down, which allowed him to immediately go intangible and fall through the chair.

Over the night, after his parents returned and sister had returned from their respective occupations, the three had already left for the park – it was dark, and the park was almost completely uninhabited during the night. Here, they took the opportunity to test Danny on his ability to wield these peculiar powers, and in no time they found that he could fly, become intangible (a condition Sam lovingly referred to as 'ghosting'), and go completely invisible, as well as actively shift back and forth between his human form and his ghost form in an almost controlled manner.

Danny was taking it all quite well; when Sam and Tucker asked how he had moved on from sheer, abject panic to simply going with the flow, he announced that he was either deep in a very cool dream or had long since gone into shock and would likely wake up screaming about it in the morning.

Indeed, he was correct: when he awoke the next day to find that he had ghosted through the bed and the floorboards and was lying in the laboratory at five in the morning perched somewhat precariously on top of a fairly tall storage case, he was certainly found to be screaming about it.

Fortunately, over the course of the month, he got better, although it couldn't be said that he had control over his newfound powers; at least five times a day he found that he would unwittingly phase into intangibility and his hand would slide through his desk, or he would walk through open locker doors, and once he managed to make his entire left arm disappear into nothingness for a good thirty seconds before he noticed anything was wrong (thankfully, nobody else did either). And approximately a month after the curious accident that had granted him this odd gift, he had his first true fight with a ghost.

It was then that he realized that his accident had opened a two-way portal between the Ghost Zone and corporeal plane, and he knew immediately that as it was his fault, it was his responsibility – the powers that had been granted to him by the Portal would have to be used to keep the ghosts from overrunning the real world.

Having such responsibility, however, didn't necessarily mean he couldn't occasionally have a bit of fun.

Which was exactly what he did the day after his essay was due.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Chapter Notes :

1 : The Box Ghost, I always thought when I first saw the show, might very well be a spectacularly powerful king of ghosts of a sort. That honour obviously goes to Pariah Dark. But when I was originally going to run with this concept and posting a variation of this story on the Nick message boards (it was cleaned out with all of my other posts when I made a rather 'strong' political argument and the moderator spazzed), the fic started with a scene where Danny... Well, fought the Box Ghost. This 'opening' is tribute to that.

2 : Corrugated cardboard doom! Hah! I want to say he actually said that, but I can't back that up, and I'm proud of myself if I thought of it.

3 : The essay prompts Danny has in the 'opening' are actual essay prompts used in past years by various colleges. The first is from Simmons College; the second is a negative variation from the University of Pennsylvania; the third was given by Kalamazoo College in 1993. College essay prompts suck.

4 : The secondary section is a note for anybody who does not pay attention to the theme song and didn't see 'Memory Blank' (which was, in all, a very long explanation for giving Danny a super hero emblem... I liked it anyway). I had originally thought to open the fic this way, but it wasn't going too well, so instead I compressed it into a very long explanation of everything that really should have lasted maybe three paragraphs and went on for... Lemme see... About three pages. I'm just that awesome.

5 : I was going to have this chapter be longer, but I realized that three pages of totally superfluous unnecessary notes and five pages of back story was entirely too long as it was. That, and I have absolutely no follow-up to that final sentence. Why not? Because I don't plan things! Spontaneity is how I function when I write! Because I'm just that cool. Yeah. Bow before me, mortals.

6 : I like how this entire first chapter has nothing obvious to do with the plot. Just thought I'd mention that. But like I said, anybody who doesn't pay attention to the theme song and hasn't seen 'Memory Blank', which says something completely different anyway, this is for you. The real story begins next chapter, after I figure out what I was implying with that last sentence.


	2. The Phantom of Amity Park

Ghost in the Shell  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Madam Chaos Shadow  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Notes :  
The only reason I go to school is so I can spend all day jotting down notes for stories, it seems... Except for art. I like drawing in art.  
Good god! Less than forty-eight hours and I've got six reviews, four favourites, and three alerts...  
Speaking of reviews:

**Divine-Red-Crayon** : Aging ghosts is iffy; I believe that it's possible for a ghost to change after they've died. Not in a sense of aging, but in a sense of... Kind of a limited shapeshifting, I guess. Bertrand (Penelope Spectra's assistant) was a mostly formless ghost, granted, but he did have the ability to alter his appearance. Any other ghost would likely be able to do so if they really put their mind to it, although the change would be more gradual, a forced transformation from the effort of the psyche on the spirit imprint. God, I'm a nerd.

**purrbaby101** : Yes and no. When I first named it, it was most likely a subconscious decision, as I'd never seen 'Ghost in the Shell' (and now that I have, this has nothing to do with it). I had heard of it prior to then, though. It wasn't a premeditated decision, but I'd say that yes, the name is almost definitely taken from the anime. Good movie, too... Little confusing (of course, I came in halfway) but very good.

**Faith's Melody**, **The Halfa Wannabe**, **dArklTe-sPirit**, **Crystal Remnant** : Thank you for your encouragement. Yay! Watch me crash and burn the story now!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C H A P T E R : O N E  
: T H E - P H A N T O M - O F - A M I T Y - P A R K :

Saturday.

Most children locked in the confines of school oftentimes look forward to Saturday; after all, they're given free reign from the oppression of their prison, manifest both in the confined physical walls of the school institution and in the confining mental attitude of their teachers. Saturday, then, is their release – the day they stay up late, the day they find themselves participating in sports or going to the beach or down to the park.

Daniel Fenton, far better known as Danny to his friends, his acquaintances, his family, his teachers, and (thanks to the news media) most of Amity Park, did not quite appreciate Saturdays to the same extent that most other kids attending Casper High did. Oftentimes, his Saturdays were interrupted by slightly more pressing issues than recovering from a terrible history test. He was almost entirely convinced that ghosts were out to force him to fail high school.

They certainly weren't giving him any reason not to believe it; attacks almost every night accompanied weekly by the more powerful and threatening assaults from the other various ghosts occasionally curious to remember what fresh air tasted like (regardless of them being able to taste it or not) left him haggard and exhausted every weekday, occasionally prompting him to entirely skip classes to take an opportunity to sleep. Saturdays were just another brick in the wall that was his ghost-infested life, although they sometimes gave him an opportunity to sit down and shut his eyes and wonder why he had walked into the Fenton Portal in the first place, why he had leaned on that button, why he had listened to Sam–

But this was not that kind of Saturday.

This was the Saturday that he really appreciated – the kind of Saturday where he could actually go out with his two best friends and wander Amity Park and not feel inherently threatened by the strike of a ghost. For this Saturday, he had actually bothered to close the doors to the Fenton Portal so long as his parents weren't home to notice that they weren't open.

And this made all the difference. It meant that if ghosts were going to get out, they'd have to exit from Wisconsin. And Wisconsin was quite a long way away.

This particular Saturday was also the day dedicated to football practice for the Casper High Ravens. The practice meet was stationed in the field a short distance from Casper High – the field ringed with bleachers and brilliant spotlights for the night games. Dash Baxter – the great muscleman team captain, blond haired and blue eyed and the central male figure of the popular group – was still not out on the field, most likely getting all of his gear ready.

Danny peered out from under the bleacher seats, a smile etched across his face as he looked towards the field. "He'll be out soon enough," he whispered.

"Don't you think this is wrong?"

He looked over to the voice of reason known as Sam Manson and frowned. "Sam," he said, his voice somewhat agitated, "this is _Dash_ we're talking about. How is this possibly wrong?"

"Didn't you learn anything from Poindexter?" she asked, a righteous warning clearly cut on her words.

"Of course I did," Danny responded irritably, settling back down to where he was behind the bleachers. "Don't release ghost nerds from abandoned locker mirrors. I don't see how that's related, though."

"He's got a point, Sam," Tucker offered. "I don't see how that's related, either."

Sam sighed heavily and massaged her temples, clearly agitated by the boy's inability to listen to the reason she was trying to bring to the situation. "You _know_ what I mean..."

Dash tramped out into the field shortly thereinafter, dressed down in his heavy football garb, and Danny's smile turned into a dark smirk, his eyes briefly flashing deep green. He sent a glance down to Tucker. "How long?"

"It takes them about a minute to realize what's going on, three to react, and five to break things in frustration. And if you really want to try the endurance run," he added with a sly smirk, "you can try it for ten – I think that's how long it takes before they begin crying."

"Five," Danny began, immediately shifting into an intangible, invisible form, "is all I need."

He took off, phasing through the bleachers and hovering just above the sixth bench up. He released the hold that allowed him to become intangible in order to set himself down on the step, and felt a wave of cold wash over him. He no longer needed to close his eyes, but he knew that this next moment was to be savoured, and he shut his eyes as the electric flash overtook him, converting him into his ghost mode while he retained his invisible cloak. He opened his eyes again, electric emerald, and mentally began the count.

_Five minutes starting now_.

He leapt from where he was and his legs dissipated behind him, forming a fine vapour mist as he prepared himself for accelerated flight. He swooped upward and then took the curve, slicing through the prongs of the goal and spinning in midair to swoop to the back of the team – specifically, Dash's back.

He had long since learned that ghosts had a particular way of spooking people when they tried – it was rare that he would try it, and even then he would only attempt to do so during the night, when people were most receptive to hauntings. Still, with Amity Park slowly gaining the reputation of Most Haunted Town in the Contiguous United States, it was not unknown that the Phantom of Amity Park would strike during daylight hours.

What was unknown was his reason for generally targeting jocks.

Danny phased into intangibility as he listened to Dash begin to instruct the team on the warm-up drills, and shot forward at full speed, all of a hundred and twenty miles an air, straight through him.

Dash's voice stopped immediately and Danny whipped around in midair, still completely unnoticeable, to watch.

"What's up?" Kwan asked slowly. "Dash."

The Ruler of the Jocks shook his head and frowned. "Nothing," he hissed. "I just thought–"

_Oh, he can't finish a sentence on his own_.

Danny rocketed down and stretched his psyche beyond his being, concentrating on Dash, and as he closed in he felt Dash's presence, his mind beginning to sidle against his own. Danny easily shoved it aside ("I always knew it was feeble," he joked) and set himself to fall into Dash's body just as the words left his lips. Overshadowing always took a few seconds to finalize, and during that time the victim became a bit still, unable to do anything. Thankfully, Danny had mastered the art – he could make a perfect imitation of his host, as none of his own traits would spill over like they had when he first began – and could perform the move even in his fully human form.

This also, effectively, meant that he had perfected the art of making people look like complete asses.

"Dash...?"

Danny decided that Dash was facing the wrong way at that time; clearly, the jock wasn't meant to be looking at the team. He would much prefer to look at the goalpost. The very thick, metal goalpost. In fact, Danny decided, he was pretty sure that Dash would just love to run right for the goalpost, and just forget to stop himself–

The collision came a fraction of a second after he phased out of his body, and Dash let out a very loud, very pained "Ow!" the instant he hit. He staggered back, rubbing his head and holding his chest where the centre-front of his rib cage had collided with the cold metal beam, and he spun around.

"All right! What loser decided that would be funny!"

_Good start, Fenton_, mused the very loser that Dash was looking for. _But you can certainly add a bit more flair_...

He flew off for one of the small wooden benches set up along the side of the bleachers, where the team extras were kept, and picked it up, looking over to the crowd and flying with a deliberate slowness toward them. All eyes turned for the possessed table, and many of them widened in fearful realization.

"The Phantom!" he heard, accompanied with mutters and, on the end of Dash, a loud guffaw. "Phantom!" Dash said dismissively. "Why would the Phantom come to a football meet?"

Danny couldn't help but smile at the memory of the time when he was still known as Inviso-Bill.

He lightly tossed the table just far enough so that it landed in front of the group; all of the players present jumped, but Dash let out a yell "Hah! Couldn't hit the broad side of a-"

CRACK!

A heavy wooden crate that had been carrying some of the supplies suddenly smashed against the back of Dash's head, and Danny had a feeling he had just about reached the three minute mark Tucker had approximated. Dash stopped down, one hand on the back of his head and the other picking up a splintered chunk of the crate, and he spun around, throwing it in the direction the errant crate had come from. The ghost kid faded into intangibility instinctively, despite the fact that the piece of wood sailed about three feet to his right.

_I have to admit_, he mused, _the Box Ghost_ does_ have the right idea_.

The rest of the team was smart – all except for Kwan, they had scattered, some of them picking up some football equipment and preparing themselves to use it on the first thing they saw. Kwan himself looked uneasy, but Dash continued to look defiant, holding up another chunk of wood, this time like a baseball bat, and daring the phantom to just try that again.

Naturally, Danny obliged.

He scooped up one of the footballs that had been in the box, turning it invisible as soon as it hit his hand so Dash wouldn't be able to anticipate it, and threw it full force for him. The football materialized into visible space and slammed him straight in the forehead, sending him staggering back before falling into the grass, twitching slightly. Kwan took this opportunity to join the rest of the team and made a run for it, and Danny, wanting to end his short reign of terror with a good coupe-de-grace, opened his mouth and unleashed a long, low wail.

There was no force behind it – he was well aware of the destructive power of the Ghostly Wail – but the ethereal sound behind it caused the entire team to scatter yet further in a panic, screams of 'Ghost!' and 'Phantom!' intermingled with cries of pain as two rather unfortunate young men slammed into each other in their desperate bid to get out of there.

Dash, seeing that he had nobody he needed to look impressive in front of, promptly turned tail and darted after them, and once he was clearly not looking back Danny phased into reality, laughter replacing the supernatural cry. He hit the ground, and in a flash of blue so brilliant it was white, he stood alone on the field, chuckling and wiping aside the tears that were forced from his eyes.

Oh, it was a good day.

"Four minutes thirteen seconds!" Tucker called, appearing from underneath the stands and waving his PDA. "New record!"

Sam rose with him and sent him a sidelong glare. "You shouldn't encourage him..."

"Oh, it's only a little fun..."

"You should lighten up, Sam," Danny added, walking towards the pair. "I deserve a bit of fun, too..."

Tucker leaned in closer to the goth girl, a wry smile across his face. "You're just angry that he hasn't done anything to Paulina..."

Sam flushed, but refused to say anything for a moment. She opened her mouth, changed her mind, and switched the subject: "It's abuse of your powers, Danny. You really shouldn't..." She paused for a moment, frowning as Tucker and Danny shared another laugh, and Tucker whispered "I like how you pulled a 'Box Ghost' on him". Sam, finding no better recourse, brought her hand down and slammed it over Tucker's head, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Danny leaned over, stared at Tucker, then looked up to Sam and smiled sheepishly. "I think I'll... I'll..."

"Think of an excuse to run away before I find a reason to hit you?"

"Yeah, that works."

He turned to bolt, but Sam called him back, and sheepishly he turned to face her, fearing the repercussions of her wrath. No such thing came upon him, however; instead, she smiled faintly and produced a small black and purple book from her bag.

"Poetry night at Skulk and Lurk," she said. "You'll be there, right?"

"Oh... Oh!" it hit him then. "Yeah, yeah definitely! You're reading?"

"That's kind of the reason I'm reminding you..."

"Of course! Wouldn't miss it for any ghost!"

And with that, Sam smiled, said a brief goodbye, and departed. Danny waved after her for a moment, smiling stupidly, and below him Tucker coughed. The ghost boy snapped out of it and looked down to his friend, who was still lying on the ground, looking somewhat miffed.

"Little help, lover-boy?"

Danny glared at him at first, then smirked. "That's okay," was all he had to say, and with a flash of white he stood as a ghost above Tucker. "I think you'll be okay." He immediately went invisible, then set off to fly home.

Tucker stared up into the sky, blinked a few times, and frowned. "I need a girlfriend just to have an excuse to do that..."

..:00:..

"Rest in uneternal sleep  
Drowning in unfound desires  
My puppet  
Live my torment  
Suffocating  
In your guilt  
My mannequin  
Play the positions I lay out for you  
You are no soul  
No centre  
No  
You  
Dancing shadows, departed hope  
Taunt you  
As they did me  
My marionette  
Dance as I command  
Fall as I command  
Sink according to my will  
I am the puppeteer  
I am the master  
I am the controller  
I am the controlled  
And you  
Are mine  
To play with  
As I so desire  
In my vicarious dreams  
While I have no control for myself  
So cry  
My dear rag doll  
As the fallen that you are  
You have no hope  
No dream  
You have no other freedoms  
So indulge yourself  
_Pluere"_

A quiet, polite clapping filled the interior of the Skulk and Lurk bookstore, and Sam's arm came down frm where it had been hold the paper before her to allow her to read it. She would have smiled, but this was Skulk and Lurk, and therefore she was a goth, and one rule about goths is that smiling isn't allowed after a poetry recitation.

Danny had joined in with the polite clapping, although had he had his way he would not have remained subdued. He didn't get it, he had no shame in admitting that, but something about the way she had read it, the pauses in speech, the emphatic silences, at least gave him an idea of the emotion – a deep, angry sarcasm from what he could tell – even if it was beyond his grasp to understand what she had been going on about.

"That was... Really good," he whispered as Sam came towards him to take her seat.

Sam smiled. "Did you understand any of it or did it just _sound_ like I have problems?"

"I don't get a word of it."

"In that case," she said, leaning back in her chair with a self-satisfied smirk, "I have done my job."

..:00:..

And between the time it took Danny to fulfill his day by torturing Dash and for Sam to present her poem, something most intriguing just happened to take place in such a desolate state as Wisconsin.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Chapter Notes :

1 : In all honesty, if I had my way, the Plasmius Portal would be in Wyoming. Nobody lives in Wyoming. Wisconsin is the second most random state that I would have chosen, but Wyoming will always be first in my heart for Random States to Send Things To. Then Wisconsin. Then Minnesota, only because I forgot it was a state. Funny note: In Creative Writing today, we discussed the fact that Christopher Paolini lives in the middle of nowhere (ie: Montana). He could move to Why, Wyoming (population 51) and probably not notice anything. Then somebody mentioned Minnesota, and it seemed like most of the class had forgotten it was a state.  
I live in Florida, incidentally. I don't keep track of anything north of Alabama.

2 : Please ignore the fact that I know absolutely nothing about football. Or its equipment. But footballs are wierdly shaped. And hurt when you get pegged by them. My knowledge, it is extensive.

3 : I just remembered something interesting that has nothing to do with anything; Johnny 13's shadow was destroyed using the light's of the football field, right? Or vanquished momentarily, or whatever. I think. I saw that episode once and didn't pay much attention. It just occurred to me that every time there's an evil shadow on the loose (except in the evil shadow episode of _Aladdin_), they're destroyed by stadium flares. In _DuckTales_, when Magica DeSpell had an evil shadow, it was lured out into a football stadium rigged with huge spotlights. Even in _Darkwing Duck_, where the shadow was really more of a mole, he was lured out into a stadium full of huge spotlights. I... Just wanted to mention that.

4 : The football slamming into Dash's forehead might seem totally normal (or an arbitrary bad joke), but it's not. It's inspired by a friend of mine. He was reading us questions for the Latin competition and we were throwing grass at him, so he stood up and backed away. Somebody among us had a test paper, so she folded it into a paper airplane, threw it at him, and hit him square in the forehead. He fell over and twitched. We laughed. We're very nice.

5 : The second part was written (more like 'copy and pasted with some more words added to the end so it didn't stand alone and look funky')at two thirty in the morning because I forced myself awake on a Friday morning to write it. Sadly, I was more awake at two than I would be four hours later at six thirty, when I'm _supposed_ to be awake.

6 : Why does Sam have a poem? Ah, my friends, I have my reasons, and my reasons surprisingly go beyond 'Because it's cool'. I found that this poem is strangely workable for later in the fic, so I shoved it in there for some in-your-face foreshadowing.  
Incidentally, Sam is allowed back into Skulk and Lurk Books since it's obvious she'll never be inviting Kwan again. "All the Clouds Look Like Footballs". Indeed.

7 : Yay fer short chapters!


	3. The Wisconsin Ghost

Ghost in the Shell  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Madam Chaos Shadow  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Notes :

I was babysitting when Identity Crisis came on. I disguised my insane love for Danny Phantom (kindled, naturally, by The Ultimate Enemy) by putting Nick on about an hour too early. Thankfully, my plot worked – the end of Catscratch came on, and then the little kids came out about the time Avatar came on. We waited a half an hour, and naturally Avatar flowed into Danny Phantom.

I realized that they're as insane as I am.

When Danny tried (and rather badly failed) at multiplying himself, I mentioned that he could do it Reign Storm. Oliver (the elder of the two) countered that the suit multiplied his power; I countered that the suit had been drained considerably and would not have much of an affect on that. During the theme song, I mentioned that it was the most brilliant plan in the world to walk into a dangerous electronic machine while it was plugged in – he then began discussing with me the intangible nature of ghosts and how ghosts didn't have molecules or a DNA structure to fuse with humans.

And then we giggled a lot, because this was undeniably the weirdest, most giggle-worthy episode I've seen. Reminded me rather too much of what happened in the old Darkwing Duck episode _Negaduck_, though, when Darkwing's positrons and negatrons are separated and result in the darker half of his personality (Negaduck) rampaging while the nicer half of his personality (Drake Mallard) became infatuated with helping bunnies. It also didn't follow with either 'What you Want' or 'The Ultimate Enemy', both of which I'm using as a springboard for my own theory, which was disappointing. My final conclusion was that somehow, this episode was either out of canon (according to it was supposed to come after Reign Storm, but before The Ultimate Enemy by the nature of the next episode, The Fenton Menace, I assume that's meant to come after TUE, but Danny is unable to duplicate himself, and Technus was still trapped in the Doomed game here, whereas he was free during Reign Storm to... Um... Exist – I don't remember what he actually _did_ during Reign Storm, but I've been assured he was there).

I'm going to wind up writing a fic in protest to it, just watch; I actually had a dream in protest to Identity Crisis last night (and... Um... Then it went into 'Grand Theft Auto: Danny Phantom', which was really bizarre), so writing a fic isn't beyond my scope (for clearly, my story prompts are always my sugar-high dreams).

I'm still not sure when any of the episodes of DP take place – apparently, there was one sometime in April, but after that there were references to September, and now it's summer... Ugh. My head hurts.

The fact that the little kids (Oliver, at least; his brother was asleep at the time) looked up the instant I pointed and yelled "LookitTheUltimateEnemy!" warms my heart. This makes five and a half times now for me. And they're showing it on TurboNick, which means I'll wind up watching it on my computer at, like, three in the morning later on. I'm such a dweeb.

End Stream of Consciousness Ranting.

**Crystal Remnant **: You don't get it? Neither do I. But it filled the 'angst' quota in Creative Writing (apparently, it also got me fans in that class, which is wonderful, except they don't know that I wrote it) and it works when I apply it to other things. Because literal ambiguity is good.

**Lessien Sharpwind** : You have no idea how happy that makes me. There is a Delaware, isn't there? Well, I feel okay making fun of other states: I live in the oldest city in Florida. By old, I mean eighty percent of the population is retired.

**Faith's Melody **: Ugh, I've seen some o' them fics. I have this compulsive need to be able to hear the character speaking. Of course, in this chapter, I think I utterly destroyed Vlad (inadvertently, but it's pretty sad when I can't even tell if I did) so I'm not one to talk...

**purrbaby101** : Yeah, we all know who lives in Wisconsin. Few enough people live there that you can hazard a guess without much trouble. Of course I'm speaking of the Packers!

**Zavier Starwood** : It does make more sense if he's dead, but that's difficult to work with (I'd like to work with that concept one of these days, though... But I'll probably forget before I do). I do understand why the Ghost Zone is so very, very green, but ectoplasmic energy is also represented in several different colours throughout the show (green, red, and blue come to mind, but I know there's a fourth one I'm forgetting) so why not have it more colourful and not so very, very green? Hmm.

**The Halfa Wannabe** : I finally noticed Kwan up there the... Fifth time I saw the opening. Didn't register the other four. Made me laugh hysterically and point it out to the little kids. They stared at me and wondered what was wrong with me. They'll never know. I don't even know. I think it's because I take Latin that I'm insane. Or I'm insane and therefore I take Latin, which only made it worse... Bah, I don't know.

**Krin** : Ah, I did take the Vital Information out of my bio, didn't I? Go me. For the record, I'm sixteen (just a month over, actually, my birthday is August 15th), and I always refer to myself as a sad little person/monkey. My friends are all sad little monkeys, too. And we have fun being sad little monkeys. And throwing paper airplanes at people (it's really sad when you're knocked down by those). Yay for being pathetic!

**dArkliTe-sPirit** : I'm setting up my smoke alarms, I'm just waiting for them to go off... I can't keep up this pace and still be decent. Especially when I get around to introducing the plot. (Plot? Woah, what a concept).

So said (for far too long), welcome to Wisconsin.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C H A P T E R : T W O  
: T H E - W I S C O N S I N - G H O S T :

Vlad Masters was very upset.

He didn't seem the kind of man to have anything to be particularly upset about – he was a multi-billionaire, a tall and well-kept and attractive man who had everything in life going for him – yet he seemed quite beside himself with fury by the time he got down to his basement that day. Any spectator of his great mansion would not understand why; his wealth had brought him everything he could hope for barring the acquisition of his favourite football team, the Green Bay Packers, and the greatest love of his life, a woman now known as Maddie Fenton. It was understandable, of course, that he was always bitter with the knowledge that his greatest love had married the greatest oaf of a man that Vlad had ever had the misfortune of knowing, a horrid buffoon named Jack Fenton, but even with that fact constantly living beside him he was a most gracious host, very rarely letting this old rivalry get to him.

Those who knew Vlad extremely well, however, would understand the source of his rage on that fine, early Saturday afternoon in Wisconsin.

"GET BACK!"

The Plasma Whip came down hard on the amorphous head of the ecto-puss, and with a screech the ectoplasmic entity skittered back from whenceit came, a whimper seeming to emanate from its throat. Vlad's cold, medium blue eyes scanned the area around him, the whip crackling with energy and emitting the occasional smart snap as he cracked it, trying to force any other ghost still hiding within his laboratory out of his house and back into the stupid, shiny green portal.

"I have no desire to come after you," Vlad murmured slowly, his eyes settling finally upon the form of a small puppy-like ghost cowering under a table. "I merely wish you"- he took a step forward -"to go back through the Portal"- another step -"and leave me BE!"

The whip came down next to the dog, and with a yelp the puppy leapt from under the table, coming to Vlad's feet and snarling. All at once, he grew enormous, a ravening hound with teeth about the side of the mans' upper arm. Vlad cast aside the whip, allowing the weapon to skitter across the floor before coming to a stop against the far wall, and he stared down the dog immediately.

"Please. Back in the Portal."

A sharp snapping bite just short of his nose greeted his kind suggestion.

"Very well. I was rather hoping we could do this the easy way, but apparently you won't cooperate." A flash of black light formed from the man's waist, encompassing him in the negative glow and replacing his stately, dignified form with a curious ghostly manifestation of himself; much more muscular in comparison to Vlad's slight frame, calculating red eyes replacing his almost inviting blue, skin of a surreal blue-tinted glow, vampiric fangs revealed in a dark smile.

The dog pulled back, blinking a few times, and allowed another growl to escape him. Vlad Plasmius looked levelly at the canine, and, hardly moving, swept his hand to the side. A thin strip of green followed his path, climaxing as it slammed into the enlarged dog. The dog reverted to his puppy form and when flying through the open portal at the opposite side of the room.

"Bad dog," Vlad scolded sharply. "Very bad... Hello?"

Somethingpurplehad just emerged from the portal. It shook its enormous head and roared, and Vlad could see that a huge ghost dragon of some sort was attempting to push its way through the portal. Feeling somewhat perturbed, he acted to make sure that it would neither manage to push all the way through or, heaven forbid, get itself stuck in the portal tunnel! That would be quite the embarrassment.

The Plasma Brand – a long, thing cattle brand marked with an intricate 'VP' on the end, channeled with ghost energy to ignite the letters and allow them to brand into the ectoplasmic skin of the ghost – came to his hand, and with a single thrust it slammed against the forehead of the dragon. The beast roared and fell back, and Vlad glowered darkly at the portal, summoning the whip to his other hand and standing before the entrance, both weapons at the ready for the next entity that would slip out of the Plasmius Portal.

Vlad, awaiting the next spectral limb to emerge from the ghostly portal and preparing himself to sever said limb from its owner's body, had to admit to himself that he had no clue what was going on.

A Saturday was usually spent in the den, surrounded by the gold and green of the Packers memorabilia that littered the walls, all of it kept behind thick glass casings so that the sanctity of his massive collection would not be interrupted by the common guest; interrupted, nay, _defiled_ by the merest glancing touch, lost forever if so much breathed upon by those unworthy to bask in the glory of his team.

The team that should have literally been his, anyhow.

It mattered not. Saturday was spent in the den, surrounded by these vicarious trophies, reading whatever literature came to him (usually starting with the paper, as he did every day, and moving on to the more interesting books) or, sometimes, taking himself to his lesser known hobby of knitting. On occasion, he would take it upon himself to procure a sheaf of paper and a fine ballpoint pen and begin crafting elaborate schemes or doing mathematical work on the machine he had been attempting to construct the prior day. Of late, his occupation had turned more to plotting than anything else; ever since he had personally met Daniel on the rogue trip that the insipid fool Jack had taken to visit Vlad's mansion for a high-school reunion, Vlad had known that young Daniel Fenton – known at first from the reports of his ghosts by the name of young master Daniel Phantom (although the crude manner of his reconnaissance ghosts tended to leave a large part of the boy's proper title behind, and instead shortened his proper praenomen to Danny) – must come under his control, must be given his instruction, his tutelage in order to fully realize the powers the young phantom had at his disposal.

And so Vlad set himself to try and find ways to force Daniel over to him, to come under his wing. Thus far, his attempt had failed; his first and most direct approach had failed when he had merely requested of the boy to join him, and his subsequent attempts – ranging from hiring ghosts from the Ghost Zone itself toputting a high price on the boy's head to outfitting a young girl who knew his human incarnation from his high school – had been no better. Vlad's other plans, all drawn up during his free time on a quiet Saturday afternoon after he had finished reading the paper (and possibly accomplished a small bit of knitting), were all doomed to failure, he could see that immediately.

No sense not to try, however.

After all, Vlad Masters was the original hybrid, the first ghost-human mistake to be born from Jack Fenton's idiocy. He had learned to appreciate the gift just as it was – a gift. A gift to be used to the fullest, to be used as he saw fit, to be used for profit and gain and power. Using this mistake to his advantage was how he had become a successful man, and he longed for an apprentice; an apprentice who was very close to Jack, particularly, an apprentice that Jack would be none the wiser to, an apprentice that would ultimately be able to deliver a single crushing blow to his nemesis and leave the great oaf utterly destroyed, distraught, more useless than the insufferable fool already was. All Vlad wanted was revenge, for in revenge he would be able to advance on Maddie, and ultimately that was all he longed for: his true love.

He could be so much better for her than Jack, he knew it; he had the money, the charms. And the children would come under his guardianship as well; his particular interest, of course, stayed with Daniel, whose powers mirrored his own freak abilities, but Jasmine, the girl, had an intelligence about her the likes of which he had not seen since college, since Maddie..

This particular Saturday had rather abruptly been interrupted by a loud tinkling of glass from down in his laboratory, followed by a powerful thunk. Vlad, believing that the ecto-filtrator was warning him rather furiously that changing it out would be a good idea, went down to the laboratory to investigate, and found that, rather than seeing the small filtration gauge next to the portal quiver with suppressed energy as it often did when the Portal was about to overload with ghost energy, the basement was merely infested with ghosts.

Much shouting followed, and in a most undignified manner Vlad had decided to act immediately, and set about shunting off the ghosts by slamming them over the head repeatedly with a small broom. Certainly his lordliness was affected by this peculiar display – showing himself to be so common that it was not below him to utilize the power of a broom's alternative cleaning ability! – but there was some medieval charm to using the old standby weapon, and being able to beat a ghost over the head with nothing more than a broom filled him with a sense of power that left him feeling far superior to the ghouls swimming in his basement. If they were so easily vanquished by a typical cleaning utensil they had no reason to be out of the Portal and in his house!

Besides, he took quite a while longer to locate the Whip than he had wanted.

Which brought Vlad Masters – who, in his ghost incarnation, much preferred to be known as Vlad Plasmius – to the situation he was in now. Crimson eyes were fixed upon the swirling green mass that was the portal to the Ghost Zone, his grip tightened upon the shaft of the prod.

Why were ghosts streaming from his Portal?

He could have sworn that the ghosts much preferred to exit from Amity Park, which was quite a long way away from Wisconsin. Amity Park was where the first Portal had been opened (somewhat ironically, as Jack should not have had the intelligence to activate it), allowing ghosts to become accustomed to its presence; Amity Park was also where the infamous Daniel Phantom resided, and ghosts the Zone over were determined to be the one, the celebrity, the great hunter to bring him down. The fact that Plasmius had hired a good number of them for this job only aided matters – on Vlad's end, anyhow – and gave ghosts a reason to leave their domain and walk the human world once again.

But Amity Park was a four-day drive with Jack Fenton controlling the four-wheel drive of an RV the size of a small town; effectively, the fastest mode of land travel known to man (a comment which could hardly be construed as complimentary). Why, then, were these ghosts exiting from the Plasmius Portal rather than the Fenton Portal? What had prompted them to leave their general space of residence to come here instead?

"I am the Box Ghost!"

Vlad could do nothing but sigh and snap the whip again, thrusting the Plasma Prod forward. "Just stay in there," he said wearily. "I have no boxes for you. Get back! GET BACK! I hired you in the first place, you miserable... GO!"

A blast of blue energy came from the end of the prod, and the Box Ghost, emerging from the confines of the Portal, took the blow and was shot backwards, deep into swirling vortext of the Ghost Zone, disappearing entirely from view. Vlad turned away for a moment and quickly appraised a lab to make sure nothing was hiding from him and, satisfied, he turned to close the Portal. His cleaning duty was over, so why not–

A great, silver hoof suddenly appeared in the doorway as the Portal's doors began to shut, forcing the two sides apart. Vlad, who was in no mood to play games with the ghost, pulled them apart and then shut them, full speed, towards each other. The hoof remained in place, and with a terrible squealing sound Vlad realized that the great silver hoof had managed to not only stop the doors, but dent them very deeply. They closed most of the way, but clearly the creature on the other side was not about to give up – with a tremendous strain on the doors, they suddenly buckled, collapsed inward, and a blast of cold air shot into the laboratory, dropping the temperature so drastically that even Vlad, already accustomed to the frigidity of his ghost form, felt the cold wave sweep across him.

He looked up and stared.

Emerging from the portal was an enormous, jet black horse; it must have stood at least six feet at the shoulder, its long neck adding another foot to its height. Silver tipped the horse's hooves and coloured the thin feathered fur off the back of its ankles, this same fine thread reflected in the ashen gray of its mane. With a toss of its head, Vlad happened to notice something peculiar about the horse's structure; it seemed thin and skeletal overall, and its features seemed almost to suggest something more reptilian than equine, and as though to validate his thoughts to huge wings, the membranes thin but apparently strong, unfurled from its back.

The horse trailed from the portal, its tail swishing behind it, more silver accenting the onyx of its body. It stood there before him for a long moment, almost as if posing, its body outlined in a thin white light – ghost energy. And suddenly it turned to face him, its eyes brilliantly white, blank orbs of ghost fire staring back at him. The horse turned entirely to face him, flaring its wings for effect, and stared at him for a very long moment.

Vlad could not take his mind off the fact that it – this... this _creature_, this _beast_ – had just torn down the door to the Plasmius Portal. This could only mean more ghosts would come through after it, and that would mean more shoving them back in, which was not how he wanted to spend his Saturday.

'Plasmius.'

An echoing call in the confines of his mind. Vlad regarded the horse carefully, but its dead eyes told him nothing, and, almost curiously, he began: "Yes...?"

There was a moment of silence, and the horse reared back slightly, stamping her – it was a her, he was sure of that – feet against the floor, the sound of hooves against tile echoing in the confines of the basement laboratory. I knew it! she raged indignantly, tossing her mane and sending a glare into the green swirl of the portal. 'It's the _wrong portal_!'

Vlad, who once again had the errant thought run through his mind that he still had no idea what was happening, arched an eyebrow and regarded the horse carefully. "And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing...?"

'The blank white eyes turned back to him, and the horse-creature snorted, a thin red mist coming from her nostrils. Vlad Plasmius,' the voice said sharply, 'I come here looking for one of your own. You know the half-breed Danny Phantom.'

Not a question, a definite statement. Vlad, however, found no reason to answer the ghost horse's question.

"Please tell me why you and you're compatriots are flooding out of _my_ Portal," he said cooly. "Maybe then I will answer your questions."

'I know not of them,' the horse growled, 'but I have been searching for the Portal that will lead me to Danny Phantom. It seems, however, that I have come through the wrong entranceway, and I would very much appreciate knowing where the half-breed truly resides.'

"I can assure you that he isn't here."

'But you know where he is.'

"That is true."

'Then you will tell me where he is.'

Vlad's eyes narrowed as he took in everything he could about the jet black, skeletal ghost horse. "To whom do I owe this pleasure?" he repeated, although this time his voice carried an air of demand rather than subtle prompt.

The spectral horse decided to humour him this time.

'I am known as the Nytemare,' she purred. 'I am here to-'

"Don't tell me you're the ghost that makes people have bad dreams," Vlad said with a sigh. So many of these infernal ghosts had such horrid puns for names...

**'Why** does _every last person I speak_ _with_ assume that!'

Vlad didn't even bother.

"What do you want?"

'I am here for Danny Phantom,' the horse said again, her voice calming once more after the burst of anger that had resonated from her. 'You should well understand the grief that his presence causes within the Ghost Zone.'

"I'm very well aware," Vlad responded cooly. Of course he was well aware – part of the animosity towards the ghost-kid was, after all, his fault.

'I had decided to attend to this matter personally, but unfortunately it seems I have accidentally stepped out into the wrong Portal.' She turned her head entirely to look toward the portal. 'I assume that the Portal leading to 'Amity Park' would also have the ability to close its doors. It seems we have made a miscalculation.'

_The Fenton Portal is closed? Jack must be out doing something else insufferable today..._

That would explain why the overflow of ghosts had decided to come out from his Portal rather than the one stationed in Amity Park. After all, the only ghosts that were supposed to originate from the Plasmius Portal were the ones he was doing business with...

Perhaps he could maintain that tradition.

"You are called the Nytemare?"

'Yes.'

_What an atrocious pun._

"And you are of the many who want revenge on young master Daniel?"

'Of course. You _are_ aware of his status in the Ghost Zone?'

A thin smile crossed Vlad's lips.

"I may be willing to help you," he murmured, his voice dropping to a soft, inviting purr, "if you will in turn help me. I also wish for a hand in Daniel's future, although I don't want him killed. I want him as mine."

The great horse flared her wings, in the action shadowing half of the laboratory, and brought her head down to look Vlad Plasmius straight in the eye. 'And what good will this do for me?'

"My tactics have yet to bring him to me. I believe I have been too focused on pure force up until this point. You're speaking to somebody through the Portal, if I'm not mistaken."

'You are correct, half-breed.'

"You have scouts. You have a small army under your command."

'You're very astute.'

"I will give your army free passage through the Plasmius Portal," he offered congenially. "I will allow you to exit the Ghost Zone without any trouble on my part. I imagine you can travel quickly, and your army should be able to reach Amity Park in only a few days. You may mount your offenses here. I am giving you the opportunity to do whatever you want to Daniel, anything short of destroying. I want you to tear him down, weaken him."

A smile actually spread across the horse's face, a draconic, toothy smile, and clearly she was pleased by the sound of this plan. 'And to be given this opportunity, what do I owe you?'

"All I want," Vlad hissed, "is Daniel."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Chapter Notes :

1 : About the time I had written Vlad saying "Hello?" I decided to walk out of the room and get something to drink. The TV was still on after the second showing of Identity Crisis (Danny with half a California surfer dude accent makes me laugh _way too much_) and, as it happened, the tenth showing of The Ultimate Enemy was on. I came up just as Box Lunch (who makes me laugh _way too much_) was speaking of her Empty Calories of Doom. I am proud to say that I stopped, stared, and just kept walking. That took self control.

2 : Tch, I can't even remember if it's officially called the Plasmius Portal. Ah well.

3 : I swear that I don't care what else happens in the series; if they make an episode showing Vlad beating off ghosts with a broom, I will officially name Danny Phantom as the greatest cartoon ever made.

4 : They had to make him a Packers fan. I don't know anything about the football, and the only thing I know about Packers is that I relate them to Wisconsin, tea, and giant spiders ever since I saw that one MST; I can't remember the name of it, but it was the first episode I ever saw. Involved Wisconsin, tea, and giant spiders, and whenever there was a hoard of people (Wisconsin natives, I assume) Crow, Tom, and Mike would all lean in and whisper 'Packers, mutter, mutter, Packers!' And that's what I know about football.

5 : If Nytemare sounds like a bad Pokemon name (rather than a Xanth-based pun), you guessed correctly. Nytemare here was modeled after a Pokemon I created for a text-based Pokemon RPG. The Pokemon was a genetic experiment done by Team Rocket, known as the Nytemare, which was simply a dark/electric horse. It would evolve into the Nytekrawler, however, which was more ore less meant to be modeled after J.K. Rowling's Thestrals. Because Thestrals are cool. Nytemare herself is a Thestral rather than a Pokemon... For obvious reasons.

6 : And as I went on, I kept screaming to myself that Vlad was being improperly written. And if he is, I apologize; Vlad obviously hasn't appeared with a speaking role in too many episodes, we get no idea of his personal life during these episodes, and the two episode I saw where he played a major role – Bitter Reunions and Reign Storm (I missed Maternal Instinct, which I believe was the only other episode he played a really decent speaking role in) – I saw maybe twice in the case of Bitter Reunions, and once in the case of Reign Storm (and I don't think he did much in Reign Storm). And I don't trust other fics to properly characterize him, so... I'm sorry. But I'm pretty sure I've mangled Vlad.

7 : I can't use typical telepathic... Um... Whatever those greater than-less than signs are actually called. So I had to resort to the British Columbia method of speaking for telepathic communication (that is, use of single quotes instead of double). Did you know that in Canada their dialogue quotions marks are reversed? It's true. My copy of _Half-Blood Prince_ is from British Columbia and it's like this.

7 : Ooh! Suspense! Plot! Wow! That took long enough.


	4. Academia

Ghost in the Shell  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Madam Chaos Shadow  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Author Notes :

I went back to watch Bitter Reunions again (they have it on TurboNick, alongside The Ultimate Enemy). It didn't help much. I tried to watch Million Dollar Ghost, but apparently nobody wants me to see it – TuboNick kept on shunting me back down to Bitter Reunions (which is an excellent episode, but I'm _trying_ to watch Million Dollar Ghost, thank you!).

Public Enemies and Maternal Instinct aired over the week, and I caught both of them, thankfully.

I love Wulf, and the fact that he speaks Esperanto. I don't know it myself, but the language is a kind of a fusion between Latin and Spanish from what I can tell, which means that I can understand part of it, which makes me absurdly happy. LATIN WINS AGAIN!

And having seen Maternal Instincts, I can safely say that Vlad's motives, as far as I can tell, are almost primarily centred on his vengeance on Jack, his acquisition of Maddie, and his acquisition of Danny. Jazz _might_ be part of his plan, but getting her would only be another blow to Jack. So why did he steal the Crown and Ring? Why does he randomly sweep into the Ghost Zone to get dangerous artifacts? Why is it so darn _complicated_ just to get the girl and her kid?Well...

I keep having a mini heart attack when I either check my e-mail or check my stats: I am not used to getting this much of a response off of a fic. I mean... Wow. Seriously. Wow. Double digit favourites is _not_ normal for me.

**Just About Everybody :** Uh, that's reassuring. I was afraid Vlad would end up being... Not Vlad. My fears were mostly set aside when I finally got around to seeing Bitter Reunions and then _finally_ saw Maternal Instinct, and I realized that Vlad's not _too_ too hard to write for. Teenagers are easier, though -- I have a problem with sarcasm, myself, so I can relate better.

I'm now disappointed when Vlad _doesn't_ fight ghosts with a broom. I'll make a broom-beating campaign of these days, you'll see, and then you'll know I've officially snapped (I've unofficially snapped thus far... I'm not sure what the difference is).

Does Chapter III hold up? I have no idea, I wrote half of it between one and two in the morning.  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C H A P T E R : T H R E E  
: A C A D E M I A :

Danny couldn't breath for a long moment as he stared down the paper. His jaw was entirely unhinged, and it took Tucker poking him on the shoulder to finally get him to close his mouth. It took Sam slapping him to entirely wake him from his stupor.

"I'm quite shocked as well, Mister Fenton," Mr. Lancer whispered, sweeping past Danny as the boy blinked a few times, ensuring that his head was clear. "I haven't seen responses of that calibre since your sister was here... Perhaps part of her is finally rubbing off on you."

_Perhaps she helped me write most of it_, Danny thought, a vague smile tracing its way over his mouth. His eyes, however, remained utterly transfixed by the red ink that scrawled an 'A+' across the top of his paper. He set the paper down, feeling a tremor run through him again, and looked over his shoulder. He ignored the fact that Tucker was leaning in and muttering incoherently in shock; Danny's attention was to be torn away from his triumph by the fact that he was just about to die.

Farther back, where Dash took his seat, he had received his own essay back, and some form of admonition from Mr. Lancer. As the teacher walked past, Danny could see Dash look up and glare at him with such seething hatred that Danny almost felt himself break into a sweat despite the immortal presence of ghostly frigidity around him.

Sliding back into his chair, he placed the essay face-down and whispered: "He got an F."

Tucker reflected Danny's apprehension. "And F stands for 'Fenton', right?"

"Oh yeah."

The instant the bell rang Danny was the first one out the door and he had set himself at such an impressive sprint he was also halfway down the hallway by the time Tucker and Sam could follow him out. They took off in his general direction, and found him already at his locker, hastily exchanging books and sending paranoid glances behind him, once even sticking his head through the locker door to get a better look.

"You know," Tucker said slowly, "if you can do _that_ and not feel weird, why can't you just ghost through the wall into the storage closet?"

Danny pulled his head back, bringing himself back from the peculiar position he had been in, with his neck cut halfway off by the locker's door. He sent a glance to Tucker, then to Sam, then back to Tucker and almost immediately to Sam again.

"That's a great idea," he said finally.

"I said it!" Tucker cried indignantly. Danny ignored him.

"Danny," Sam said, an exasperated sigh leaving her. "One of these days you're going to have to buckle down and stand up to Dash on your own. With_out_ overshadowing him," she added dangerously, seeing that Danny was about to utter protest.

He couldn't even respond to that; he knew full well she was right (when it came to life matters, she was right frighteningly often). There would come a day when his ghost powers wouldn't be enough to help him evade Dash's grasp, or when he would find himself in a situation where their usage was impossible.

"FENTON!"

But until then, he could rely on them quite nicely. His powers _and_ his legs.

"Oh, crap."

Danny bolted.

Sam and Tucker were unable to do anything for him once Dash went on his post-failure rampage, and as the jock dashed past them, his torn paper still clenched tightly in his hand, the two exchanged a look and Sam politely closed Danny's locker, reset the lock to zero, picked up his abandoned backpack, and accompanied Tucker to the cafeteria. He would catch up with them during lunch, and he would likely want to make sure that his backpack hadn't been left to be trampled underfoot in the hallway.

His backpack, of course, was the last thing on Danny's mind for the moment.

_Why?_ he moaned mentally, taking the sharp right turn and keeping his accelerated pace down the hallway, pushing past kids still at their lockers and once inadvertently managing to shove somebody inside the confines of his. _Why was I born scrawny, and short, and with a last name that seems synonymous with a failing grade?_

He heard loud cries from behind and knew immediately that Dash was doing his level best to level everybody that got between him and Danny. Danny, who was doing his level best to keep Dash from leveling him, didn't even bother to look back; it was hard enough to manoeuver in the halls between classes and lunch, even worse when running at Danny's breakneck pace, and he couldn't risk looking back and tripping over somebody.

A left turn this time, then he slowed down a bit, feigning a creeping tiredness to allow Dash an opportunity to catch up; Danny might have been born scrawny and short and with a last name apparently synonymous with a failing grade, but he was incredible agile when it came down to it, and his ghost hunting gave him great practice for it, and this was the only opportunity he could use to keep Dash from making an indentation in the nearest wall that curiously resembled Danny's head.

Danny feinted a right turn as Dash came upon him, then caught himself and actually ran full til to the left. While Dash was momentarily distracted (he wasn't the sharpest tack in the box), the ghost kid took the opportunity to phase straight through the door he had accidentally run directly toward and realized with the loud crash of mops and buckets and brooms that he had found the very storage closet Tucker had been referring to.

Well, _this_ was only slightly better than hiding in the bathroom.

"Gotcha!"

The door swung outward, and Danny brought up a hand to remove the bucket that had fallen over his head. Dash's muscular frame was standing before him, illuminated by the light from beyond the door, a dangerous smirk curling his lips.

"Nice hat, Fentonella," Dash said.

Danny waited for the rest of the sentence, but it turned out that Dash had already run out of words and was apparently going to move straight onto the pounding. Danny had long since grown accustomed to this ritual – Dash gets an F, Danny gets pounded. Such was as it had been since middle school.

But, of course, Danny didn't need to go quietly anymore.

He felt a cold spot in the palm of his hand and clenched his fist, tightening his grip around some that he knew to be small, green, and very bright. As Dash reached down to him, Danny reacted; he pointed, yelled "Hey, look! A brick wall!" and, while Dash was busy trying to figure _that_ one out, the scrawny short kid promptly through the ectoplasmic flash grenade at him.

A blinding surge of green ectoplasmic energy erupted from the small orb, and with a yell Dash was sent reeling backward, hands over his eyes as he tried to get the glare out. Danny smirked and, knowing that he had bought himself perhaps five seconds, promptly phased through the floor.

Dash blinked a few times as his vision began to clear and sent a dangerous glare around the immediate area. However, even as the brilliant white fog lifted from before his eyes, it seemed that Danny had entirely disappeared; his punching bag had made a run for it. The jock was stuck as to how his target had caused such an explosion of light, thought about it for a second or so, blamed it on a really good flashlight, and then reached out to grab the kid who had the misfortune of wearing a pocket protector.

The slamming of a locker resonated through the hallway and Dash left it behind him with a terribly self-satisfied grin. Shoving somebody in their own locker always gave him a sense of elated pride, wether it was Fenton or not.

..: 00 :..

Danny landed in the basement of the school, his breath coming before him in wisps of mist. Apparently, the storage closet had been located just above the cooler; sending a glance around him, Danny confirmed that there was, indeed, quite a lot of meat down there. He couldn't help but shudder; stack of meat didn't exactly fill him with terror, but knowing that the school kept a single stockpile of meat this huge didn't assuage his latent fear that at least half of the lunches were definitely not safe for human consumption.

He touched the ground lightly and became tangible as he did so. No point to keep going down – he had phased through floor and streets and underground walls before, and quite frankly it was all rather boring by the time you got underground. Unless you liked looking at dirt.

A lot of dirt.

He felt infinitely better now that he was roaming the underground meat-infested halls of the school – sure, it was somewhat creepy, but as long as the meat wasn't going to lash outor strike him or eat him or something, he was okay with its presence. To think of it, being attacked by a five-story meat monster wasstill beat being beaten by Dash, and he really wouldn't have minded too much even if...

On his breath, already a fine mist, a wisp of blue escaped, and with an involuntary, sharp inhalation he stopped dead. He steeled himself, pulling back into a defensive position, his hands clasped into fists as medium blue eyes surveyed the immediate area, butnothing seemed to be going on. Nothing down here, at least...

"Oh, _no_..."

A sharp scream from above and the resounding slamming of a locker. However much that sounded like signs that Dash had been present, Danny had a feeling that it wasn't the popular kid doing something.

_Still, y'know, if you just wait a minute, Danny_...

Another scream, and this time he almost distinctly heard the word 'ghost!' in its cry. He sighed.

_Okay, fine, good enough._

"Going ghost!"

A flash of electric white, and immediately Danny Phantom was through the floor of the central hallway and keeping himself invisible so as not to set off a second set of ghost alarms. Another wisp of blue, this time more substantial and visible, escaped him, and he spun just in time to take the impact from a low-flying spectral entity. He and the whatever that had just hit him immediately went intangible and fell through the walls until coming to a stop in the middle of the cafeteria.

As Danny looked up, he had the great pleasure of seeing the hulking, angry remnant of Tucker's old ghost.

Thankfully, this was enough to send the class out of the cafeteria in terror. Most of the class, anyway; Sam and Tucker had taken the great position of ducking under their table instantly. Danny figured the only other person that cared – Valerie – was off slipping into her ghost-hunting equipment. At that moment, he didn't entirely care.

"That big ugly thing looks familiar," he heard Sam whisper.

"Don't remind me," Tucker hissed back.

"Seriously, why's that thing look like you?"

"Don't _remind me_, Sam..."

"I wasn't there!"

"I'd rather not get into it. Ever."

The incident came back to Danny rather fluently and he ran over the scenario in his mind again as he shoved the brute off of him and prepared to fire a blast of ectoplasm at him. He realized that he was definitely not going to have a good time. Last time he had to combat this particular beast Tucker had been under the influence of some pretty powerful ghost 'magic', and Danny had only been able to defeat him though use of the Ghost Catcher. In this case, however, the ugly beast-like perversion of his friend was no longer fused to a human, and the Ghost Catcher wasn't available anyway.

Danny's train of thought began to slow as he realized that had been a few months ago; since then, he had more control over his own powers, was better trained, was more powerful, was–

"Augh!"

CRACK!

Still going to get his ghostly little butt handed to him on a silver platter.

Danny looked up from where he had hit the opposite wall, automatically bringing his hand to the welt forming on the back of his head. That was going to sting for a while.

"Wail!" Tucker yelled suddenly.

Sam sent him a glance. "Do you _realize_ how stupid that sounds?"

Danny sent a quick glance to Tucker, then to Sam, then to Tucker and almost immediately back to Sam. "That's a really good idea," he said simply.

"I said it!" Tucker cried indignantly.

Danny ignored him and instead went about taking his advice. He inhaled sharply (for nothing more than effect; ghosts certainly had no need to breath)and released the low, haunting melody of the Ghostly Wail. A shockwave of energy, marked by the borderline inaudible sound and the cold freeze that originated from the ghost's form, overtook the ghost and sent him rocketing back, sending the hulk flying into the opposite wall, a low crack mirroring the sound of impact from Danny's blast.

He ended the barrage and nearly toppled over, watching the electric sparks clinging to the walls dance before his eyes. Regardless of the fact that he had gotten enough practice to pull off the attack without needing anger or sorrow to back him up, he could not recover from the incredibly draining effects. Looking up, he could see that Beast Tucker couldn't either; the ghost had already phased through the wall in retreat.

"Hah!" was as far as Danny got in his taunt.

SLAM!

And quite suddenly Danny was out on the grass in a very, veryawkward position; his left arm was pinned uncomfortably under the rest of his body, his right hand acting to keep him from falling over while the rest of him was, somewhat comically, still suspended in the air, a shallow furrow dug around him and marking the trajectory he had just sailed along. As he looked up through the thin strands of white hair, he happened to see Jazz standing over him.

"Er... Hi?"

A vague warmth spread over him as the electric coils, the transformation rings, promptly marked his transition back from ghost to human, and he fell entirely to the ground, exhaustion beginning to overtake him.

"Danny!" Jazz yelped, sending a quick glance around the area to make sure that everybody else was too preoccupied to notice that the ghost boy had just landed in front of her and promptly transformed into her brother. They were, and she, no longer feeling quite so paranoid, knelt down to help him to his feet. He took the procured hand and, as he rose, she began firing off questions demanding to know what was going on. He told her the first thing that came to his mind.

"You got me an A+ on my essay," he said foolishly.

She stopped, blinked, then frowned. "This is a bit more important than your essay..."

"I know. But I thought you'd like to know..."

Clearly, he was somewhat beaten and definitely dazed. Jazz took it upon herself to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. She wrapped her arm over his shoulders to keep his stable and looked back into the school. Everybody had evacuated, it seemed, since the attack from that monstrous ghost...

No. Not everybody.

Sam and Tucker hit the ground before her as well, small furrows falling them as they were thrown from the confines of Casper High. Sam stood and coughed slightly, spitting some dirt of her mouth. Tucker sent her a sidelong glare.

"I thought you _liked_ to eat that stuff," he murmured darkly.

She ignored him.

"What's going on?" Jazz whispered. "Danny just came flying out and he doesn't look all that good..." She indicated the child hanging on to her shoulder, his body growing limper as time passed; it was everything in his power to remain conscious.

"I think there's a massive ghost invasion," Sam said quietly. "There was this one really big, ugly ghost-"

"I'm sure he had redeeming qualities," Tucker input quickly.

"-and after Danny beat that one back he was attacked by another one. And after he was attacked we were thrown out. It doesn't look like they're after anything right now, though." She looked back to the building. "They just wanted the school."

"That's a weird thin' t'want," Danny said drowsily, nearly slurring his words.

"Point there," Tucker offered.

"Ghost invasion?" Jazz asked, and the colour seemed to immediately drain fro her face. "Oh, no..."

And then, as if on cue, the RV appeared;amonsterous vehicle, armoured likea tank with twice as many weapons and three times as many different radar systems. The white armoured vehicile came to a full stop and idled for a moment before the low hissof steam escaped the brakes, and slowly the sides opened, a thin roll of mist exiting the sides of the truck as an entirely useless (yet somewhat cool) introductory measure.

Jazz sent a glance to Tucker, then to Sam, then to Danny, and there was a mutual understanding that they had to leave for the sake of protecting Danny's identityand Jazz's little remaining integrity.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
1 : Danny's freeze upon receiving his essay grade was entirely inspired by the time I got an A+ on an Essay Test of Death after repeatedly telling myself that a C was too much to hope for. Only I wasn't slapped, because the person I was talking to has a very strong standing about hitting girls (what a nice guy!) and was simply giving me the instructions to breathe. What a great day. My last essay actually got a B-, but I did well on my arguments and just ran out of time to even write the last paragraph, so I don't feel bad about it (besides, she drops the lowest test grade, and my lowest grade _was_ that test, which... Really shocks me... I suck at history)

2 : My school has no hallways. O.o Hallways in schools scare me since mine doesn't have any. Our buildings are also colour-coded. We went to a Latin competition where all of the buildings were green and wondered why they needed so many English departments. The next one we went to the school was all indoors and we were claustrophobic. And the drink machines there were mean.

3 : Resetting the lock to zero came from the last episode of the last season of Monk, when Monk had a flashback to when he was a little kid at school. I, personally, don't _use_ my own locker, so I don't have anything to do with locks and don't know if this works better, but it's... It's there.

4 : "Hey, look! A brick wall!" comes from one episode of Fairly Oddparents where Timmy distracts Francis by pointing and yelling... Well... "Hey, look! A brick wall!" I figured an FoP reference was appropriate.

5 : Don't tell me ghostly flash grenades aren't a good idea. It's so much easier than _carrying_ them with you.

6: Stopped dead is a funny term t'use in reference to Danny...

7: I remembered "What you Want"! YAY!

8: The Ghostly Wail kinda sucks in the show. I mean, it's really powerful definitely, but the sound itself makes me want to cry. Go. Use your imaginations and make it _better_. I don't care how. But _do it_.


	5. Distress

Ghost in the Shell  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Madam Chaos Shadow  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Author Notes :

I needed a break, and when I take a break, it often goes on for way too long.

Thankfully, I happened to catch the ending of _Secret Weapon_ (I missed the crux of it, though, and according to Danny actually gets sucked into the Thermos, which I've been wanting to see for a while...) and then I had the fortune to see... Whatever came after it (Valerie gets a new ghost suit... _Flirting with Disaster_, that's it!). And, of course, I saw _Micro-Management_, which made me squeal in delight because Danny was almost found out by Dash.

Close calls make me squeal in delight. I need a life.

Anyway, seeing two-and-a-quarter episodes like that got me all fired up to turn around and return to the computer, looking at my schoolwork and cheerfully saying 'screw you' while I open up this file and get to work not only continuing my DP fanfic, but also commenting to an absurd extent on the contents of one of the episodes.

_Flirting with Disaster_ made me incredibly happy about one of those really stupid fan-girl things that just seem to grow on you, you know what I mean: The love triangle theories. I believe that with the inception of _Flirting with Disaster_, Danny's romantic leanings toward Paulina can finally dissolve completely in favour of him looking after Valerie, and Sam – poor Sam – is finally trying to express her feelings and, thanks to Danny being a complete nimrod when it comes to female emotions, is only going to wind up frustrating herself dropping hints while Tucker stands by, understands everything, and giggles like a nerd.

Valerie - Danny - Sam triangle. God, there are so many triangles in this series: This one, then the old Paulina - Danny - Sam, and for a while it was a quadrangle with Valerie inclusive, and then there's the Valerie - Phantom - Danny love-hate triangle, and... Ah, so many.

Coulda sworn I ranted about this before. And that I had more examples. Must've been the first time I had this written, 'cuz I kinda accidentally deleted it. I'm awesome like that. Go me. Yar.

Am I the only one that thinks that _Memory Blank_ and _Flirting with Disaster_, while being really cool, were intended for nothing more than a costume change?

And that Danny should really wear that black shirt with his logo on it more often? I'm such a dork, but I think that was neat. Maybe I should make myself one of those and have people stare at me in the non-hallways of my school...

Oh. Em. Gee. I just went back through Chapter One to remind myself of how I was writing this and realized I totally forgot how I painted the day that Danny got his powers. I forgot I could be that funny. Or this overtired. I'm more willing to accept that I'm overtired than I am to bet that I'm funny.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C H A P T E R : F O U R

: D IS T R E S S :

He knew the location relatively well, or at least had an idea of what it would look like. Not that he visited there often, but he had inadvertently found himself there on several occasions beforehand. It sounded like an awful place to be, when the description was presented to other people, but Danny found that it wasn't so bad, not really. Aside from the fact that it needed a bit of dusting, and that it was rather cramped, and extremely difficult to reach without knowing just the right avenue.

Regardless, Danny had not visited in a long while, and had not been particularly intent on going back. Sure, it was kind of a nice place to be every once in a while – very infrequently, of course – but Danny most certainly had not anticipated his return.

The top of the cabinet in the laboratory, after all, was a very cramped space.

Danny peered out from the top of the cabinet, careful not to knock his head against the ceiling as he breathed, and looked across the laboratory. The Ghost Portal was still shut, thankfully, and the tables and beakers were stable. The Ghost Catcher (Danny rather hated that little device) hung limply at the side of the Portal, and on the far end, the medieval torture devices were unturned.

Absolutely nothing had happened between him being tossed out of the school and him waking up that would warrant him sitting in a very uncomfortable position on top of the laboratory cabinet.

Marginally annoyed, he immediately assumed an intangible form and stood up, now breathing far more easily since his lungs weren't being crushed by the ceiling. He stood up and came to face nothing but darkness, but with a simple spring he leapt through the kitchen and into his room, through the bed and above it, where he hovered for a moment, considered becoming normal again, and then shrugged it off.

No point.

He sent a glance out the window and noted that the sky had taken on a steely gray colour. He sent a glance to his clock and noticed that the time was just rolling over to 6:57. A brief calculation and he realized that it was the morning. Early morning.

_Way_ too early morning.

Danny decided to play it safe – of course, for him, playing it safe was never an understandable concept. He refused to simply assume his solid form and land – taking the stairs down a story was for normal people – and instead he went completely invisible, leisurely drifting through the hardwood floors and straight down again, lighting easily on the tile floor of the kitchen. He looked around, surprised that his parents weren't present – or at least his father, he was certain to be getting an early start on breakfast.

Somebody, however, was reading a slip of paper and nervously sipping on her tea.

Jazz stared down at the white piece of paper gripped tightly in her hand, her foot tapping nervously on the floor. She was angry, Danny could see that much, and embarrassed – her expression screamed "Kill me now".

He phased in and without even bothering with hellos asked, very plainly, "Mom and Dad fighting the school invasion?"

Jazz kept her cool just enough to respond with a surprised yelp, nearly flinging the cup in her hand into the wall behind her. Thankfully, only a small line of tea escaped and hit the floor, and Danny reached out for a paper towel immediately.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, reaching down to clean up the spill.

"That's all right," Jazz said, exhaling deeply, still somewhat shaken. "Just not used to you coming out of the woodwork like that..."

Danny had to laugh. True in a literal sense of the phrase.

"Sorry," he repeated. "Just used to Sam and Tucker being... Used to it." What a stupid way to finish the statement, but he had accomplished his purposes.

"So," he said conversationally, rising from where he was and moving to throw the damp napkin away. "Mom and Dad fighting the ghost invasion at school?"

Jazz looked up for a moment, trying to figure out what her brother was talking about, and then it clicked. She nodded. "Mom and Dad fighting the ghost invasion at school."

"And you're assuming it's not going well."

"It's being covered on Channel Seven," she said, laying down the piece of paper. "I was watching for a moment to see how mortified I was going to be when I got back to school, but–"

"Going that badly, huh?" The ghost-child smirked. His father was relatively ineffective when it came to ghost hunting, although it was a bit of surprise that his mother was failing in the assault.

"Not like you would expect it." Jazz stood up and took the final sip of the tea, setting the cup down on the table and realizing that she really had no reason for rising. Regardless, she made herself busy, pushing the chair under the table and placing the cup in the sink. She ran water on it, but didn't bother to actually wash it, instead allowing the little cup and saucer to carry the stagnant water – they would, after all, be washed later. "Just that so many ghosts in there, Mom and Dad are completely outnumbered. I recognized most of them from your files--"

"Can you name names?"

She obliged.

"Ember was standing guard at the door, I think; Skulker was having the time of his life tormenting a mouse" – Danny had to chuckle about that one – "Penelope Spectra and Bertrand were– Never mind, you don't want to know what they were doing. Lunch Lady serving meat, princess crying in a corner, Technus poking around the tech lab, Walker patrolling the halls–"

Danny stared at her blankly. "I thought you were only watching for a few minutes. I didn't think they would have _cameras_ in there."

Jazz shrugged. "I guess it was tapped from the school security cameras."

"And they weren't... Doing anything but hanging out, pretty much."

"Yeah."

Danny was silent again. "Something's wrong," he said slowly. "Something is very, very wrong here. How are they fighting Mom and Dad?"

"They really aren't."

"_What_?"

Jazz shrugged. "The ghosts, they really aren't fighting. Ember's standing at the door and keeping them off, and when Dad pulled out the Fenton Peeler she got a bit of help to force him out of it, but they're just... Their."

Danny's gaze went glassy as he considered the implications. The ghosts weren't doing anything at all evil, it seemed, except for hanging out at the school. Which, come to think of it, really wasn't all that evil. At all. But the idea was that Danny would play the hero and come in to fight them off, or at least try.

Alone, he was a match for any one of them. Alone, he would get slaughtered by the whole lot. A trap. A painfully obvious trap. A trap that the ghosts knew Danny would see and have the option of avoiding.

Which either meant they were pulling for him to avoid them if he knew it was a trap, or hoping he would figure that something was going on and go after them. Or else they knew he knew it was a trap, but were banking on his instinct to inspect any large paranormal activity and break it up when he saw it. Or else they knew he knew it was a trap and he would therefore go after it, but realize this was what they were hoping for, and so avoid it, which is what they would want, because they were doing something major, or else–

_Oh, forget it_.

"Are you okay?"

"Hnn?" He looked up and sent his gaze to Jazz. "How d'you mean?"

"Are you okay?" she repeated. "You took quite a beating at the school, and you were out for a while."

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said distantly. "Getting knocked around by ghosts is painful, though."

_Not to mention the Ghostly Wail_, he thought bitterly. _How did that work? I wasn't supposed to learn that technique until ten years down the road, no wonder it kills me to use it._ A pause. _Wow, what a terrible joke_.

Of course, ten years down the road under that assumption would have meant he would have been torn asunder, his soul would have been shredded from the pressures and the astounding snowball affect of cheating on the CAT (which, incidentally, he had scored 1050 on, sans the answer key). He would have ceased to exist, actually; Danny Fenton would have been killed by Danny Phantom after the ghost fused his essence with that of Vlad Plasmius and went absolutely bonkers.

_Did I just use 'bonkers' during an internal monologue?_

"If you're sure," Jazz said slowly. "I'm just looking out for you, Danny..."

"I know you are," he responded quietly. "And I thank you for that. Although if you'd been there earlier to tell me how stupid I was none of this would be happening."

"No. But life would be rather dull, wouldn't it?"

"Point."

A moment of silence.

"You gonna go down there to help?"

"Eventually." He turned around at that and made his way for the door to the kitchen.

"Where you heading now?"

"Back to bed," he said bluntly. "Six is not a good time for me."

Jazz nodded and watched as he set off, this time taking the more conventional rout up the stairs. She turned back to the sink and brought the cup back out, dumping the water out of it and going off to pour a bit more tea. She was more of a morning person than her brother, but even she needed a pick-me-up.

And he was going to want a full briefing on the situation when he came out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1. I was trying to make it sound like a somewhat questionable resort area, then it went down to sounding like a closet, then it went to sounding like the attic. After revealingthe top of a bookshelf,the attic _sounds_ like a glamorous place to visit.

2. Penelope Spectra's new outfit (I refuse to simply call her 'Spectra'; I have a very cool gryphon character who goes by the same name, and Penelope is a disgrace) is a bit... Erm. I'm not the only one who things 'S&M' when I see it, am I?

No, that's not what they were engaged in. I imagine they were actually in a bathroom giving Klemper a swirly. But that just seems so out of character that I figured I'd let it hang. Good mental image though. Giving Klemper a swirly, I mean, not... Yeah.

3. Between writing down all of the names for the ghosts, I was referencing to to remind myself of all of them (I'm proud to say that I didn't have to actually go into any of the episode explanations, just scan the titles. Which, now that I think of it, was kind of sad). On a third Danny Phantom TV movie was rumoured to be in production, called 'The Demon Within'.

It didn't take me much thinking to immediately think of a potential link between the twin existence of Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom – the boy and the ghost – and how easily this could be exploited. Which is exactly how my theory goes.

I swear that if The Demon Within winds up not only existing, but supporting this theory wholeheartedly, I am not only going to squeal with joy, watch the episode, and then faint; I'm going to demand royalty rights. I mean it.

4. I was randomly selected by Duke University to take the SAT when I was in seventh grade – I think most of my school was ('cuz we don't have hallways... And 'cuz were considered gifted). Back in seventh grade, I managed to swing a 1050 (and beat the hell out of 85 of all college-bound seniors in Reading and Algebra, and 35 in Geometry, which was a class I wouldn't have for another three years, so hah!). I just took the 'true' SAT (now with essay and strange cursive test!) a few weekends ago, and I'm patiently awaiting my results. If they suck, I'm falling back on my ACT (got a 28 composite score, which is part of the 'highly selective' spectrum. Damn straight! I'm special!)

5. Holy cheesecake, I just found a temporal loophole!

In _Memory Blank_, Desiree makes it so Sam wishes she and Danny had never met. In doing so, she prevents Sam from encouraging Danny to go into the Fenton Portal. Thing is, if Danny had never gone into the portal and gotten zapped and died (which he did. According to me. And I'm very reliable) then the portal would have never been activated. Which means that Desiree would never have escaped. And even if she had been sealed in a piece of pottery beforehand, the pottery wouldn't have broken, because the series of events that made it so Tucker and Danny were at the carnival on that very day would not have taken place, and even if the pottery had broken Desiree would have no reason to do what she did, as Danny would not have done anything to her, she wouldn't know who Tucker or Sam are, or any of that.

Don't mess with temporal loopholes, yo.

6. Don't get up at six if you can avoid it. . No matter how much sleep I get, I can't do it.


	6. Convention

Ghost in the Shell  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Madam Chaos Shadow  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Author Notes :

Last chapter was too short. I'm going to go insane and make up for it.

Incidentally, I just learned that Danny Phantom is going to stop at fifty-three episodes, which is a weird-as-hell number. However, unlike what happened with Invader ZIM (where the production crew was told they had twenty-four hours to leave and it took negotiating to let them finish a few of the final episodes and cast members were allowed to leave as their jobs finished until the skeleton post-production crew remained to wrap up the Christmas episode), the final episode is not slated for completion until February of next year.

You know what that means.

That's right. Online petitions and letter campaigns have a year to take their effect.

And you know what that means.

It means we as fans send hoards of **well worded, calm, NICE AND HUMBLE** letters to Cyma Zarghami, new president of Nickelodeon Networks (Herb Scannel apparently stepped down just last month. Interesting.) Remember that really angry, hate-filled letters don't work, ever; well-worded letters do.

Seriously. They do.

So we have a year. I know I'll ultimately be doing my part (because I'm a whore when it comes to supporting something I love). I would also like to re-emphasize that letters should be addressed to **Cyma Zarghami**. Not Herb Scannel, or Butch Hartman, or anybody else. They can't help you. Flooding the president's box, however, can. (And possibly the Kremlin. But I wouldn't be too reliant on them.)

So flood it with well-thought-out letters. Sign the good online petitions. And even if they don't rethink the action, rest assured that they know we're here afterward, and they'll be quite receptive to other suggestion; good DVD releases, for one.

Lastly, on a random note, I think I'm selectively psychic (all right, now that I've tested psychic abilities, time to try ghost powers, see which one is better). A long while ago, there was a half-hour Icons episode on, and when I hit information I says to myself, I says "It would be hilarious if this was the Tim Schafer hour-special and they mislabeled it". And they _did_. Later that week, Cheat! was on, and I said "It would be funny if this was the Psychonauts episode". And it **was**.

And earlier on Wednesday, I saw an hour-long thing titled Nicktoons TV, and thought to myself as I clicked on it "Wouldn't it be awesome if this was the Ultimate Enemy? Oh, but what are the chances of oh my god it's Clockwork".

And then I watched TUE again and it made me _so freaking happy_.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C H A P T E R : F I V E  
: C O N V E N T I ON :

"That does it!"

Jack pulled back on the Fenton Fisher and tossed the tangled mess aside, glaring at the school as another amorphous spectre lazily rose through the roof, looked down to the two standing outside, and yawned.

"Maddie, get in the van, we're ramming straight through!"

"Jack!" she cried. "We can't do that! This is still a _school_, and unless the ghosts do grievous collateral damage we can't interfere like that!"

Jack looked back at the school. The entire building had taken on a faintly blue aura, and the walls had taken on a faintly green colour. Ghosts – both clearly identifiable as once-people and simple ectoplasmic masses – fluttered in and out of the buildings walls, and he could swear that at one point he had seen a particularly nerdy-looking individual rise up and offer what he could vaguely identify as an eggcream.

"But Maddie, we've got all sorts of _cool stuff_ on it..."

"No collateral damage!"

"Oh..."

Collateral damage would have been the only thing that would work at this point; the concentration of ghost energy was giving the school an aura so powerful that Jack was finding it absurdly difficult to break through the defenses. He was working backwards by this point; the Peeler had been one of the first things to come out, and when the ghosts had all ganged up on him to keep it out, he had moved down; Maddie had been offering constant support with the more powerful guns, but the ghosts had eventually stripped them down to nothing but the RV, the Fisher, and a thermos that Jack had never gotten to function.

Now, they were down by the Fisher, too.

"This is really sad, you know," Jack said bluntly.

"Don't worry about it," Maddie murmured. "The ghosts haven't waged on offensive. That means we can catch them off guard. Arm the RV."

"We're charging!"

"No, we're _arming_ it."

"Oh..."

Jack entered the RV with Maddie falling in only a few seconds later, and with a flurry of button presses the RV suddenly came to life; several beam weapons mounted on the back, a shield generator at its belly, a little flag waving the Fenton name. Lightning shock, magma cannon, ectoplasmic beam... Everything at once was poured into the launching of the weapon systems, all hoping for a single assault on the school, for a tearing down of the ghosts taking up residence there.

No such luck. The entire procession needed merely to pull themselves back into the confines of the brick building, and they were completely unharmed.

"O-kay..." Jack said slowly. "This isn't good..."

"We're not giving up yet," Maddie hissed. "Jack, turn us around. We'll see what we can get back home."

Ember was bored out of her skull.

She leaned against the alcove that led up and into the main doors, absentmindedly tuning her guitar – it didn't even need tuning, hadn't for quite some time, and never would again, but she was certainly bored enough to bother – and only looked up once she saw Skulker leap awkwardly into her field of vision, slamming against the ground as the graying mouse shot past him and down the steps, away from the school.

"What are you doing?" she asked bluntly.

"What?" Skulker looked up, looked down, looked after the mouse, and took a moment to formulate his response. "I'm... I'm hunting that mouse." He pointed as he stood. "I have this _thing_ against mice that comes out when I'm bored enough, you see, and I was just..."

"That's great." Ember went back to 'tuning' her guitar.

"D'you know why we're here?" Skulker asked suddenly. "All I know is–"

"We were ordered," the pop star said immediately. "We were ordered here because we really have nothing better to do." She absently strummed one of the chords. "_Nothing_ better to do. I _think_ Phantom was involved in the deal, but we aren't supposed to move."

"Therefore..."

"It doesn't matter why we're here." She shrugged. "All I know is, I'm bored out of my mind and I have a concert I need to play later tonight."

"This does seem rather silly– Wait. You're playing a concert tonight?"

She looked at him. "I've been doing that _every night_ in my Zone. Do my ad distributors not cover your Zone or something? You live in the _boondocks_?"

"No! That's Jebidiah's territory!" Skulker yelled indignantly. "I just... Lots of important things to do..."

"I'm sure."

Another unnecessary chord.

"Can't we get Poindexter out here?" Ember asked hotly.

"Of course not, the hunters would be in here immediately."

She frowned. "Not like we can't take them."

"Point."

A silence stretched between them, and Skulker absentmindedly turned his attention to where the mouse had scampered off to, contemplating for a moment shooting it from afar. He decided, ultimately, that there wasn't much of a point; why bother? It was only a mouse.

"Why'd you come here?" Ember said suddenly.

"Why else?" Skulker responded, smirking. "I can't say no when there's a potential chance to get back at the ghost-child. He has made a fool of me several times."

"Out of all of us," Ember hissed. "Although I had been hoping for a far more _personal_ encounter..."

Steel claws unsheathed on the back of the hunter's gauntlet. "My sentiments as well," he purred. "But as our employer stated, this could be our best opportunity to break him." He regarded the blades carefully, checking for any impurities and knowing full well he wouldn't find them. "So long as she gives me first choice on him, I'm very happy."

Ember sent him a glance out of the corner of her eye. "You're a bit _unstable_, aren't you?"

"I just want his head!"

She gave him a cold glare, and it was about then that the two decided to stop talking.

"You're nuts."

Danny looked over to Sam and frowned. "There's a ghost invasion at our school and I'm going to try and break it and figure out _why_. How am I nuts?"

"How many ghosts are in there? A lot. Every one on your files, plus a bunch of peons. You're not going to make it back alive."

"I hadn't intended going in their 'alive', so I don't think this is an issue."

Tucker nodded. "Point."

Sam sighed. "You _know_ what I mean. But seriously– Danny–"

"I'll be fine!" he said again. "I've been through worse!"

Tucker nodded. "Point."

Sam glared at him. "Would you _stop that_?"

"Sorry." He switched the subject, bringing his PDA before him and nodding again. "All right; we got correspondence, we're hooked up, if anything happens out here we'll tell you immediately." He smiled. "Good luck in their, man."

"Yeah," Danny said hollowly. "I'll need it."

Electric white flash, and Danny Phantom shot out from behind the brush and toward the school. Same sighed and slid back into her position, then looked over to Tucker and frowned.

"And you just let him go in there."

"He's stubborn," he said with a shrug. "No use trying to get him away. Besides, he's got his turf to protect."

"His... His _what_?"

"Turf. You know... His territory. His pad. His–"

"Is Technus in your PDA feeding you this or something?"

Tucker was quiet for a long moment, until finally he managed to utter "Shut up."

_I'm not here to fight them_, Danny thought to himself, sliding up alongside the building. He was invisible, of course, stupid not to at least try for a semblance of stealth, and he slipped easily through the wall and into the hallways.

He blinked several times and frowned to himself.

_This is underwhelming..._

Extremely so.

The hallways were, of course, flooded with spectral entities, mostly the amorphous variation of ghoul that Danny had encountered most often when the Fenton Portal had first opened – most of them had since learned not to go into the outside world since then. He said the grayscale entity Seymour Poindexter float by, chatting idly with one of the squid-like beings, but aside from that, nothing.

_Way too weird_.

Weird in a sense that everything seemed so very... _Normal_, where it not for the fact that there was a procession of ghosts instead of kids. Somehow, he was vaguely disappointed by the fact that he was not seeing the drunken revelry he had anticipated. And somehow, that meant immediately that something was wrong.

He crossed the hall between groups of spectral entities and phased into the next room, one of the bathrooms, where he had to stop for a moment to listen to the quiet, chilling sobs coming from one of the stalls. He opted not to see what was going on and continued easily past the sanitation corridor and into the record room.

Technus, as Jazz had reported, was playing around with the files.

And playing solitaire.

Which he was managing to lose at.

Ignoring him, Danny leapt out of the room and continued down the next hallway, glancing occasionally into the classrooms to see if there was anything going on in there. Sadly, there was nothing to intrigue him; Klemper, who looked a bit damp, was idly playing something that looked like pictionary at one of the chalkboards with a small group of other ghosts.

The cafeteria was an uproar of noise and confusion, marginally edible products flying everywhere, smeared against the walls and ingrained in the long scar-like crevices all along the walls, floors, everything. A faintly ethereal odour mingled with the dank stench of long-rested sweat, and...

Danny stopped paying attention after that. It was too similar to normal cafeteria conditions to really _care_.

The ghost-child pulled back and phased past the Lunch Lady and into the deepest confines of the school, settling outside of the principals office staring up at the ceiling.

_What the heck?_

As far as he could tell, they weren't doing _anything_ of interest.

He phased back into full reality and leaned against the wall, sending a glance over his shoulder for a moment and smirking as he saw the rather large 'No Loitering' sign hanging above him. Yeah, this was the way to stick it to the man... Stand under the 'No Loitering' sign.

_Oh yeah. I'm badass_.

_CRACK!_

Danny hit the ground, feeling a peculiar lightness tingling inside his head. The lights flickered around him for a moment as his vision faded in and out, and a sudden warmth hit him as electric white threw a blinding veil over him for just a second, just enough for him to compute that he was lying on his side, his arm at an awkward angle under his body, and he was no longer in ghost mode.

He was allowed another second to let the words _Ah, crap_ go through his mind, and suddenly he felt a sharp pain at the base of his neck, a flow of coldness accompanying it. A low grunt as he was hefted off of the hard tile floor, and suddenly medium blue met the flaring crimson of a true ghost's eyes.

Evil Tucker.

"Okay, is it _just you_ that likes throwing me or something?"

"Down, boy!"

The snide voice that prompted the mutation to look over his shoulder, and he released his grip on Danny, allowing him to hit the floor hard. The hulking ghost pulled away, and allowed one of the various amorphous entities to walk forward. He was, however, definitely recognizable; the smile, the glint of the eyes, the fact that he was shifting every so vaguely to another form even as he approached Danny.

"Bertrand."

"Hello, ghost-boy."

Bertrand suddenly completed his otherwise slowly consuming transformation, his form moving from the viscous sheet-ghost appearance to something that looked vaguely reminiscent of a werewolf monster. A really large, beefy, green, glowing werewolf monster, but a werewolf nonetheless.

He smiled.

"Cave ubi-lupem."

Danny steeled himself for an attack by Bertrand himself, but he had no such luck; a growl from his left made him send a very slow, cautionary glance in the appropriate direction. He hoped desperately for the best; he had three allies in the form of ghosts, and one of them happened to be a werewolf (another one was the Wisconsin Cheese King – he didn't see much of that guy – and the third was the Lord of Time, a fairly beneficial acquaintance). He was hoping very much that when he turned his head to the left, he would find Wulf looking at him, and that his lupine ally would leap and give him an opportunity to escape.

Too much to hope for.

Another wolf was staring at him, eyes narrowed to scarlet slits, lips drawn back to reveal glistening white teeth. Danny continued staring from where he had found himself on his knees; the wolf continued growling from a higher, obviously advantageous viewpoint.

"Should I run?" he asked.

Bertrand nodded. "I'd suggest it."

"All right. Just checking." A pause as he rose slowly. "Do I get a head start or something?"

Bertrand began to laugh hysterically.

"All right. Thanks anyway."

He was off like a rocket in the other direction, and a second later he heard a loud bark from behind him. The werewolf, of course, was infinitely faster than he was in his human form. Ergo...

A wave of cold air blasted over him, accompanied by a hot electric white-blue, and the phantom form of the child took the air and forces himself full-tilt forward, heading toward the wall and out of the building, just before a took a southern turn and shot through the floor and back into the meat locker.

He lighted between rows of unidentifiable slabs of animal matter (he experimentally poked one of them just to make sure that it wouldn't prove to be feral) and with a heavy sigh he began to move forward, exasperation slowly creeping over him. This was getting ridiculous, they were all just _hanging out_ on campus...

_That_, he thought bitterly, _I don't get. School is the last place that I would hold my ghost convention.._.

A bang from above, accompanied by human yelling, and he knew immediately that his parents were on the scene.

"Oh, _great_," he growled. "That'll make things better..."

From behind him, a low growl, and he was very much afraid to turn around. Regardless, he did.

"You _can't_ be serious..."

The ghost bear growled and slammed one of its additional arms into a meat slab, allowing a sickening, deep thud to resonate within the locker. A growl escaped its ursine lips, and Danny had a terrible feeling that he was the approximate equivalent of that poor meat slab to the ragged, hulking creature.

"Why me?"

A bellowing roar answered him, and he took it in a manner that suggested he should fly away immediately and think about the answer to that question later.

He channeled a small ball of ectoplasmic energy in his palm and tossed it at the bear, allowing it to explode in front of the animal. In the midst of its snarling and desperate clawing to clear its vision, Danny pulled back and leapt up, through the ceiling and back into the central hallway. He shot a glance behind him – Jack and Maddie, back to back, holding each two Jack-o-Nine-Tails, doing a strangely good job of making their way through the halls.

Maddie, unfortunately, happened to be looking in Danny's direction.

Danny had made a moderate truce with his father while in his ghost form; he had helped Jack with a sinister plot that had been put out by Vlad Plasmius, after all, and had helped him escape from a prison impenetrable to the strictly living in order to do so. Maddie, however... Not so much.

Her eyes narrowed behind the cold ruby of the goggles, and Danny realized that of everything in the school, at that moment, his mother was probably the most dangerous.

"Ah..." he said stupidly.

"You," she hissed darkly.

He jerked his thumb behind him. "I'm just gonna phase through that wall and be on my way. Just thought I'd... Y'know... Let you know."

She didn't respond and instead placed the second Jack-o-Nine-Tails in her right hand, her left searching for the Fenton Thermos at her belt.

Oh. Not fun.

With a yell he spun and shot through the wall, out of the school, and back in the direction of the shrubbery that Sam and Tucker had been concealed in. They looked at him as he slowed down and landed. He sent a glance back at the school, from which a loud cracking sound was suddenly heard, and then back to his friends.

"Well, that looks like it went well," Sam said cooly.

"Yeah, very," Danny responded hotly. "Let's get out of here while my parents are busy ripping the place apart." He stopped for a moment, then looked back at the school. "Weren't Ember and Skulker up guarding the entrance?"

Tucker smiled. "They were, yes. But Skulker had to... fly, so to speak."

His frazzled nerves were mending themselves now. Danny could afford to send Tucker a sly smile. "Oh no you didn't..."

"Hey," he said with a laugh. "If Skulktech 9.9 couldn't handle the awesome power of my PDA, no way regular old Skulker can."

"And Ember?"

"She wasn't being watched anymore. She got bored and just kind of left."

"Great," Danny said with a sigh. "Won't have to deal with those two, then, and the way Mom and Dad are handling themselves..."

"So what did you find out?" Sam said suddenly. "What're they doing?"

A pause. A mild cough. An extremely embarrassed silence.

"Erm... Nothing."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. I just learned that Klemper plays pictionary and Technus is awful at computer solitaire." The two stared at them, jaws slightly unhinged. "Seriously."

"So you just–"

"Complete waste of time."

So it seemed. He gave the two of them a lift back to FentonWorks, but on their way back, despite the jokes and the jests and the laughter, he knew deep in his mind that something was terribly wrong. There hadn't been much of a fight. There was no reason for the ghosts to stay in the school. They were waiting, it seemed. Waiting for something...

A wave of cold gripped him for just a moment, and suddenly he realized that he was, very likely, afraid.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1. Jebidiah is a fun name. I hope there's a ghost named Jebidiah one day. What a fun name. I don't care what he's like; that's just fun to say. Say it. You know you want to.

2. Pictionary. My friends and I used to play abstract pictionary for about an hour before Latin Club. We had to use really obscure, long references to how the words worked... We managed to make 'Norway' by drawing a sexy troll. Now hold that mental image. I know you hate me.

3. "Cave ubi-lupem" is a Latin Club joke. Literally translated it says 'Beware where wolf', but obviously if you smush it together (smush!) it becomes 'Beware werewolf'. It originated from the saying 'ubi ubi sub ubi', which means 'where (oh) where is my under where'. We have the collective maturity of a sixth grade boy.

4. BS chapter title. End of discussion.


End file.
